Hoedt: "It's So Far, So Good"

Wesley Hoedt has targeted kicking on from Tom Cleverley’s promising end to the season when the new Sky Bet Championship campaign gets underway.

Cleverley lost just two of his nine games in charge at the end of 2023/24 after becoming Head Coach in March, going unbeaten against a number of promotion contenders along the way.

Hoedt has returned to pre-season training with the majority of his Watford team-mates and said the work has focused on keeping the momentum going.

“I think we have been building on where we ended last year with him,” the defender said to watfordfc.com.

“We’re just fine-tuning with a lot of stuff.

“Since this week we now have most of the squad back, we’re just waiting for Giorgi [Chakvetadze] and Yáser [Asprilla] to return.

“So we can accelerate the details in which we have to improve.

“We’ve been doing some great work together and it’s so far, so good.”

Hoedt won both the Player of the Season and Goal of the Season awards from centre-back last term, but focus is now on the Championship opener away at Millwall on August 10.

“It’s nice to start again,” the Dutchman said. “It’s good to get the rhythm back and to enjoy the training sessions; it’s been nice so far.

“We had the bleep test which was tough, but so far it’s been manageable.

“We have been doing double sessions, which makes for long days.”

The Den will provide a difficult start to the campaign and Hoedt has highlighted the importance of hitting the ground running.

“We need to take it game by game,” the 30-year-old said.

“We’ve seen last year that it wasn’t good enough, so we need to make sure we start strong and then we will see what happens.”