It happens every matchday, an hour before kick-off, and generally doesn’t cause much of a stir in either dressing room.

However, when Tom Cleverley exchanged team-sheets with Mark Robins’ at 2pm on Saturday at Vicarage Road, he was puzzled.

“I’ll hold my hands up, it’s the first time we’ve come up against a team selection where we thought it was something else than what it actually presented itself as,” the Watford boss explained.

“Normally from 2pm until 2.55 or whatever, my job is pretty calm on a Saturday afternoon.

“Today I was flying around to try and work out what they were doing and seeing if there’s any history of Mason-Clark playing as a striker and things like that.

“I actually like the game of chess you play.”

Cleverley talked more about the specific challenges that Coventry posed.

“Normally teams have such stability in this league, and they prepare their players to be so efficient in a system that it’s hard for the opposition to stop them,” he said.

“But they threw us a curveball and it took us a while to adjust to it.

“We thought van Ewijk and Dasilva might be wing-backs, and they would play with three centre-halves.

“It was a little bit surprising that he was playing higher and they had Latibeaudiere as a full-back, but we adjusted very quickly.”

At half-time, Cleverley moved his skipper to deal with the Sky Blues’ key player.

“That was the main change we made at half-time, getting Sissoko to deal with Rudoni.

“Listen, Rudoni is a good player and he cost them a lot of money, and is a player I highly respect who at this level is very creative.

“We had a game plan to deal with him, we just couldn’t get pressure high up the pitch to stop that source into Rudoni, so we addressed that at half time and put it right.

“I thought we dealt with it much better and more efficiently in the second half.”