Scott Duxbury takes a break from conducting a whirlwind tour of Vicarage Road – a lap inside the Hornets’s impressively transformed ground that is a hive of activity with building work at a breakneck pace – to explain.

“In the first season we brought the stadium to a level that was just about adequate for the Premier League,” the Watford chief executive says. “Now we are moving it to an even higher level. As a football club it [staying in the Premier League] changes its DNA permanently. We are now at a level of investment with the club – and in the community – where it has changed and changed for the better.”

It is just over four years since Duxbury and the Pozzo family, led by Gino Pozzo, took over at Watford, who were languishing in the Championship. “It looks the part now,” Duxbury says. “If there is a symbol of where the club is going and where it has come from then it is the stadium. You can see where we are now and where we were. Then it had three stands and just a hut for the retail operation.”