Most of us have played some sort of football game where doing business in the transfer window is part of the fun.

This summer, Tom Cleverley got to do the wheeling and dealing for real.

“It was a constantly moving landscape, and we were having to be creative and waiting for other things to happen,” he recalled.

“We don’t have an endless budget, and I was trying to utilise contacts – and it was difficult at times.

“You do so much work in identifying your key targets and some of those disappear, and with that goes a big chunk of work.

“I like to be hands-on with everything I do. That’s not due to a lack of trust at all, it’s just the person I am.

“I like to be in control and something I probably need to get better at is trusting in people who are very good at their job within the club.”

While being far from a stranger to a football pre-season, for the first time this summer Cleverley had to combine the work ‘on the grass’ with the demands of the office-based aspects of being a head coach.

“I found that tough – it was a really tough period of time for me,” he admitted.

“I can tell you honestly now my energy reserves are full again, but on August 31 I was run down.

“I’ve got to speak to these managers who have been there and done it, and let them tell me how to manage a transfer market.

“We have a lot of resources, and I collaborated with Gianluca, Scott and the owner, but I’m a hands-on guy who likes to be a part of everything.

“I stretched myself too far in that period of time, and I remember thinking after the game at Bramall Lane on September 1 I was totally done.

“So I need to manage my own energy reserves a bit better during a transfer window.

“I was splitting my time two hours on the training pitch, two hours preparing sessions, two hours analysing each session and then however many hours were needed on the transfer market.

“It was too much, and I need to manage it better.”

What other learnings did the Watford boss take away from his first pre-season in charge?

“Having come from a winning environment at Manchester United, where I grew up and learned most of my football, I think getting momentum is key,” he said.

“I’ll always like to use pre-season to work on what you do in training when you play friendlies, but I also like to have a winning environment and mentality – and we didn’t manage that.

“We had too many fixtures, so the squads were getting split and that diluted how many of the more experienced players we could put on the pitch.

“It stretched everyone, and I would change that.

“You have to make sure everyone gets enough minutes in their legs but ultimately you want to use pre-season games as proper matches.

“Looking at myself I didn’t do any proper opposition analysis in pre-season, so I have to take some responsibility.

“I was focussing purely on us: not doing less work, but not doing work on the opposition.

“I will definitely do that differently next year.”