Sat around the table in his office at London Colney, I said to Valerien Ismael that I wanted to try and give Watford fans some idea of how the recruitment process for players worked.

The Frenchman agreed, and said that it would be far easier to do it visually and verbally, rather than just give me a long answer.

He got up from his chair, walked across the room and stood in front of one of those boards you see in changing rooms everywhere in the world.

Upon it were stickers set out in his favoured 4-3-3 formation, and Ismael gave me a quick run through of how his regular meetings with Sporting Director Cristiano Giaretta were conducted from the moment he joined the club.

“Cristiano would sit where you are sat now, and I would explain to him in a similar way to how I explain to you now,” said the Watford boss.

“I want to play 4-3-3. I needed strong full-backs able to run hard for 90 minutes with high numbers covering good distances. It is the most exposed position in my system so the profile was key.

“I like to play with a left-footed centre back and a right-footed centre back. I don’t like playing right-footed on the left because it increases the pressing opportunities for the opponents when the player is not left footed.

“I needed a strong No.6. I want a particular type of No.6 because I want them to give the freedom to my technical players to get forward, score goals and be creative. That is why I need a player who gives balance between the centre-backs and the No.8.

“The profile of No.6 I need will give the freedom to the No.8 to play forward, and also provide security for the centre-backs by being in front of them. They can drop in as another defender if we needed it. I need someone who is strong, technically good, can win headers.

“On the flanks I want to play with left-footed on the right side, and right-footed on the left side. That means they can come inside and I think you saw already with that philosophy a lot of goals will come.

“Then the profile of the No.9 has to allow us to be flexible if we need to go direct. That can often be more suitable for the Championship, if we want to get crosses in.

“Looking at the No.8 position, I need one who is a creative player – more like a No.10 - and I am also looking for one who is a box-to-box player.

“Then you need options so that if you need to you can add another technical player into the No.8 positions if you need to be more creative. You need that flexibility.

“That, briefly, is how I explained my philosophy to Cristiano and how I wanted to play with my squad.

“After that, he understood that we needed, and he would go off and look at the market. He had a clear idea of what we needed and he was looking for options that were suitable.”

Ismael admitted that Giaretta acted as a sounding board as well as a source of information.

“Sometimes he would come to me with a name we had discussed and say this is a good player, but from what you have explained to me it won’t work because he is not able to do the precise job you need,” the manager said.

“Of course, that can make it difficult for me – but I also knew that when he came to me and said ‘this is the player for you’, then we know he has found a player with the profile I need.

“He knew exactly my philosophy and what I need. He has a football background, he has experience and he straight away understood.”

Ismael said that rather than spend what he described as “£20m or £30m” this summer, he chose to follow a model of adding, assessing, and then potentially adding again.

“As every transfer window comes, we assess the situation. So we will assess from summer until January, and we will give chances to all the players. They will all get their chance,” he explained.

“After that, we will go through and decide where we need to adjust. We will decide if what we have in each position is right, or if we are not satisfied. We will decide if we need to go on the market or not.

“It is a case of improve, improve, improve, until you get the right picture.

“There are really two choices. Either straight away you put all the money, £20m or £30m, and you try to buy all the players you need immediately to get the picture right.

“Or there is another way, that takes time, where you maybe go through two, three or four transfer windows to get the picture you want.

“At Watford, we decided to go the second way. And we decided that all together, and we have stuck together.”