Any player whose primary concern is the size of their monthly wage packet will not be joining Watford.

That was made abundantly clear to fans at last night’s At Our Place event at London Colney where Valerien Ismael explained he is only interested in signing the ‘right player’, who he is convinced wants to join the Hornets for the right reasons.

Chairman Scott Duxbury confirmed the Hornets are currently in negotiations to sign another striker, but the head coach was also asked how many other players he would like the recruitment team to bring aboard before the end of the transfer window.

“At the minute I’m very pleased with the squad,” he said. “It’s about finding the right player. When you try to implement a new identity, a mentality, it’s not necessarily the expensive one that will help you.

“One player can destroy a team and what you try to create, to implement means teamwork and we need to make sure when we speak to a player he gives us that feeling that he wants to be part of that process, that Watford means something for him and not only to see how much money he can earn.

“For sure it’s a part of the business as well, but this is the most important thing for me when I speak with the player, I need to get that feeling. If the feeling is not there, even if he cost £10 million I will say to Scott and the board, ‘sorry, but he is not the right player for me’. This is the way we try to find the player.”

That desire to have the ‘right players’ runs through all levels of the club. The Hornets have faced some criticism after some of their brightest talents in the Academy have chosen to move on and join other clubs – for example 16-year-old defender Harry Amass recently moved to Manchester United – but Duxbury responded: “You can’t stop that but it’s the same principle that we’ve talked about that with recruitment , whether it’s the Academy or the first team and it’s the same principle that’s changed everything here this pre-season.

“We’ve lost players that didn’t want to be here and we’ve kept the players that do want to be here and we’ve recruited players that want to be part of the Watford philosophy, not just about money. It’s the same with the Academy.

“You’re always going to get young players that believe they should be playing for Manchester City, they want to take the money now and they’ll go, and there’s nothing we can do to persuade or change that and we shouldn’t because the philosophy now we’re implementing is everybody should be proud to be here and want to be part of it.

“It’s very much the same with the Academy and the younger players that we’ve secured on longer contracts really buy into that. To help that, we’ve got to give them the opportunities, we’ve got to have a pathway through to the first team but once we do that we’re still going to lose certain players who think ‘I don’t want to be part of this, I want to go and play for Manchester United’.

“Fantastic, go, because we must retain and recruit players that just want to be here and be part of the philosophy.”