Watford v Huddersfield Town: Flexible Andre Breitenreiter prepared for the Hornets' sting

The Terriers are at Watford on Saturday with smiles on their faces and eyes wide open about the task in front of them as they fight to stay in the Championship.

Breitenreiter's visa might only have come through on Tuesday, but it is not breaking any state secrets to say that from both sides it had been in the planning for a while.

A lengthy recruitment process since Darren Moore was sacked at the end of January has given his successor plenty of time to think about how he will face his first job in English football, and in former Barnsley coach, Valerien Ismael, he is coming up against a familiar adversary.

The reason behind Moore's sacking had a lot to do with a style of football that was too often as uninspiring as the results they produced, and therefore former Schalke, Hannover and Zurich coach Breitenreiter has been recruited as an antidote.

Expect a team always looking to play the forward pass and hungry to win the ball as high up the pitch as possible when the Hornets have it.

But when it comes to the actual methods, he has not arrived to impose a fixed formation on his new team, certainly not at this early stage of proceedings.

"When the players are thinking positively as they have done in the last few weeks it's possible to press but not over 90 minutes we have to find solutions for this," he says, when asked how important fitness will be to his team.

"It depends on the players.

"Our task is to listen to the team and have a good combination.

Sign up to our new Sports Editor’s TeamTalk newsletter available this week

"I spoke to Jonathan Hogg about what he thought was the best system for the team.

"It's important to create a plan with our best and most experienced players so I have to make it 100 per cent clear.

"I like attacking football, we want to win the ball in counter-pressing. We have to play as a a unit. I am a team player.

"But it's not a question of my personal style, I want to do the best for the team to win games."

The transition should be much smoother because it has already started.

Jon Worthington has now returned to his job as academy manager but his four games in caretaker charge of the first team were a good first step towards where Breitenreiter wants to be.

"It's our job to change things but the last few weeks it's changed on a high level and they are thinking positively, they scored goals and they won games," says an impressed Breitenreiter, who was in the stands for last week’s 2-1 defeat to Hull City

"I'm really positive for this and that they believe in what we want to do on the pitch.

"It's really important to have smiles on their faces and to show their best performance.

"Maybe last Saturday was unlucky and it was a little mistake like in the past, you should go forward for the second (goal, after equalising in the 92nd minute through Jack Rudoni) but they went deep.

"You cannot change everything in two or three weeks."

It also helps that first up is Watford, and specifically Ismael. The Hornets play a less direct style than the one the former Bayern Munich centre-back built his coaching reputation on at LASK, and in England with Barnsley after starting his career in Germany with Hannover, Wolfsburg and Nurenberg.

By the time the boss spoke to the media for the first time on Wednesday, Team Breitnereiter had handed in their homework on what his current ream looks like.

"We know many things about Watford because we prepared for them on Tuesday and on Thursday we will work on our plan on the pitch," he said then. "Everything is prepared.

"I know about the manager, he coached in Germany, also in my home-town city Hannover (with the second team), and we are very respectful of Watford but we speak about our team.

"It's important our players are respectful of Watford but they have to believe in what we want to do on the pitch.

"We want to show our style of play."We will see what is possible but we will try.

"We need all the players for this game, not just the starting XI, also the substitutes to show our best performance for 90 minutes – maybe more! – to show our best performance.

"Watford are a good team with good strikers but we have a very good team and I hope we will see this on Saturday."