Javi Gracia has described his performance at Watford so far as “quite good” after he celebrated his one year anniversary with the club.

Since taking over, the Spaniard has guided the Hornets to seventh in the league and he believes his side are improving all the time.

He said: “It’s going very, very fast, but I think in all this time the results are quite good but we are always very demanding and we can do better there’s still room to get better and it’s our ambition to try to improve.

“We know it’s not easy to get the results we’ve done because the players have done very good work in this period.”

Gracia knows that hard work will have to continue this weekend as they face a Newcastle side who have taken four league points from the Hornets this season.

The head coach praised their manager Rafa Benitez, who is becoming something of a friend in England while the Hornets' boss is also familiar with Benitez’s assistant, Mikel Antia, who he played with at Real Sociedad.

He said: “I know him because I have spoken more times with him than anyone else after I came to England.

“We have played against him three times, once last season, twice this season and one of his assistants was a team mate in Real Sociedad.

“In my opinion he’s one of the best he has trained in Liverpool in Milan in Chelsea, Real Madrid and Valencia. All are very very good teams.

“We have played them twice this season. We played well, but it wasn’t enough to get a good result and after two games we're going to play the third this season. We will try to get the victory we didn’t get in the two games before.

“We would like to play more games in the FA Cup because it’s a short road to enjoy and to be able to play a final.

“We are going to make the effort to try to achieve the possibility to play more games.”