Watford adapting to pre-season life under Marco Silva

Watford’s head of sport science, Gianni Brignardello, has revealed Marco Silva is already making his mark on the club with his unique pre-season training plan.

The Hornets returned to training ahead of the 2017-18 Premier League campaign last week where the former Hull City manager conducted sessions that were largely characterised by the amount of work the players did with the football, as opposed to hard-core endurance training.

Brignardello has worked under every Watford head coach since Beppe Sannino’s one-year managerial spell during the 2013-14 season and has adapted his methods along the way – something he views as a positive change for the club.

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“All managers have different philosophies and the Portuguese staff like to work a lot with the ball, so this is a good challenge for our performance department,” said Brignardello.

“It is very interesting for us to work with a different school of football.

“We can reach a good level of endurance working with the ball. This is good as then you don’t need more time to adapt to a game.”

“It’s already very different to last season as every manager is different and they have different demands.”

“This is normal that one manager wants one kind of work and another manager wants another kind of work. This is our job.”