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Graham Simpson has embraced Aidy Boothroyd's plan to refine Watford's style of play and believes the manager deserves the chance to put right the wrongs of last season.

"I am a believer in continuity and I think we have got some great players here and a great management team," said the chairman.

"I'll support my manager. He's making mistakes but he's still learning. Hopefully we can move forward from here."

Simpson was hugely encouraged by the meeting he, along with chief executive Mark Ashton, held with Boothroyd in the immediate aftermath of the defeat to Hull City at the KC Stadium.

Top of the agenda was the £6m Boothroyd is understood to have been told he needs to raise in transfer fees closely followed by a discussion concerning the much-maligned style of play.

"Aidy has said we are going to play a different style of football and I admire him for that," said Simpson.

"I'm pleased about that, if I'm honest. I've never gone to Aidy and said, You have to do this and you have to do that'. I'm not like that. But when he talked about playing a different style I was certainly very happy, not just for me but everybody at Watford."

The rigidity of Watford's approach was one of the fundamental reasons behind a remarkable slump in form that saw them win just one of the last 16 games.

"Personally, I think it was a combination of things," said Simpson with refreshing honestly.

"There was obviously a loss of confidence, one would question the style of football played, one would look at how much affect Marlon King leaving had, should Gavin have left? etc etc. Towards the end there was huge expectation and it didn't happen. As the expectation grew a loss of confidence and fear began to manifest itself.

"It became a nightmare playing at Vicarage Road. As soon as we went a goal down you could see the nervousness in the crowd. The crucial one for me was the Barnsley game where we just didn't turn up."

That result prompted a cacophony of boos among the fans who had seen their team's hopes of automatic promotion unravel before their eyes.

"There has been a lot of criticism levelled at the club, some of it fair and valid," the chairman said.

"We have to take that on the chin and hold our hands up and say, For whatever reason, we lost it in the second half of the season'. We really sorry we didn't achieve we didn't achieve what we wanted to and we are going to try and make it better."

According to the 17th Deloitte annual review of football finance published this week, Watford paid £17.7m in wages during the Premiership season of 2006/07.

That figure has been trimmed to around £11m and, with only one season of parachute payments to come, will need to be reduced even further if Watford are to avoid another flirtation with financial ruin, as was the case in 2002/03 when they lost £5m of contractual TV revenue and the collapse of the transfer market meant they were unable to sell any of their big-earning players.

"We have been very, very sensible here," claimed Simpson.

"We have been very prudent. As a a comparson, six or seven years ago under Vialli we had played on massive contracts. We had Ramon Vega on a £1m a year for three years, we had Allan Neilsen whose final year was worth £950k and we had other big earners like Stephen Hughes and Stephen Glass. We don't have that at Watford anymore."

9:27am Saturday 31st May 2008

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