Quique Sanchez Flores claims that not having a pre-season with Watford means he is “so far” from being as settled as he would like to be within the club.

Speaking ahead of this weekend’s away match with Tottenham Hotspur, the head coach said he wanted to be honest with supporters about how well the squad understands him and his tactics and that things still need to vastly improve, despite them gaining their first league clean sheet of the season in their last match against Sheffield United.

“We are so far from where we want,” he said.

“I want to be very clear with that because it’s true and the players know and the players accept that if you want to be competitive, we are not exactly at the point we want.

“We are probably at 30 or 35%, but we are so far, we need to improve in many, many things if we want to be more competitive and we are working all together, we are working really hard during the week.

“It’s been really difficult for our supporters to understand for sure and it’s really difficult for the supporters to understand what happened, but in football these kind of things can happen and all we can do is try to fix it as soon as possible and get back to our level.”

One positive Sanchez Flores is taking into the Spurs match is the form of their opposition, who are also stuttering somewhat this season.

Defeats to teams including Newcastle and Brighton show that the North London side are beatable and the Hornets’ boss has used those examples to show his players that anything can happen.

“This is the new football, in tough leagues it’s like this,” he said.

“In Spain, in Italy, in the Premier League and in Germany, every single match is very tough, so these kind of teams, like Newcastle, like Brighton, they can win in every single stadium, it’s possible for all of us and we can do that also. This is a big opportunity to know that everything is possible in football right now.

“It’s true we took some steps in the last week because we got something that’s not happened for a long time, not conceding goals. Next time you go to the new game, all you want is to repeat things, to repeat, to show again we are able to be solid. It’s not just temporary, but what we know is how we are working.

“Of course once we go to the pitch we have to play against amazing players and also a big team, who was a finalist in the Champions League last year. We know exactly how tough it will be, but anyway we have to try and to try to prove ourselves.”

Despite the Hornets finding themselves winless and with only three points to show from their opening eight matches, Sanchez Flores said he was not thinking about relegation at all.

The head coach claimed he was instead focused on positivity and how he can improve his team.

“I don’t like to talk about that because this is the big problem in football,” he said.

“Sometimes, we try to finish the seasons in September, October, November. When we finish the season it will be May - there’s 30 games ahead so it’s impossible to think about what will happen.

“The only thing we have to do is to work in the opposite side, not thinking about the worst finish, thinking about how it could be a good end of the season, how we can improve, how proud or happy we will be if we are able to do that, this is the spirit. The problem is the view is so short in football right now, just thinking about what happens tomorrow.”