AIDY Boothroyd once told me that I should never want to get inside a manager's head, because it's a dark and murky place.

But it's as the manager vows to dust off the cobwebs from the Watford style of play that I find myself all the more intrigued as to what must be going on behind those eyes of his.

In the wake of the play-off defeat, Boothroyd wasted no time in nailing his colours to the mast when speaking a mere matter of moments following his exit from the technical area. He's promised a change - but it will be a different revolution than that which was promised last year.

This time it's a gradual 'growing up' process if you like. A wind of change is blowing through Watford, one that aims to bring along with it the good old days of 1983 where the Hornets enjoyed their most successful season, finishing second in the top flight.

Those heady heights were achieved after the 1981-82 season which saw Watford promoted from Division Two. My reason for harping back some 27 years? Astrology.

There's a little known fact that every 27 years, the time it takes for Saturn to orbit the Sun, a change occurs. For Saturn is associated with time, challenge, fear, doubt, confusion, difficulty, seriousness and hard lessons - well we've had our fair share of those this season that's for sure.

There are other more positive factors, such as structure, significance, accomplishment, reflection, power, prestige, maturity, responsibility and order. It is a time of self-evaluation, responsibility and ambition.

It's that self-evaluation that has lead Boothroyd to ring the changes at Vicarage Road, as he explains: "Changing the style of play is something that I started a while ago, or tried to at least, but I realised that I didn't have the players to do it back then.

"In the year we got promoted, I don't know whether people remember, but we drew against Sheffield Wednesday and we had tried to play through the middle third of the pitch and I decided then that we weren't anywhere near good enough to do that.

"People think that the game should be played a certain way, but you can only play according to the players that you have and I thought that because of my philosophies of playing direct and indirect at the right times, you need something to put your cap on throughout the game.

"Very quickly I could see things going pear shaped in that promotion season, so we changed it back to using the pace of Marlon King and the force of Darius Henderson."

Clearly Boothroyd now feels that he has a squad, or will have come August, that will be able to adapt to such a style of football.

No doubt that despite the fact that his boxes of DVDs, session plans, books, diaries and notepads from the 2007-08 season have only just been stored away, Boothroyd will already be planning for July.

The players that take to the field next term will spell the beginning of the new look Watford. But don't arrive on August 9th expecting to see Holland or Arsenal on the Vicarage Road turf. Boothroyd has five weeks during pre-season to gel the old and any new alike. This will be a process.

He explains: "This season, I felt that we needed to make that transition, moving away from a more direct style and the way to do it has got to be gradually. Having Tommy Smith and Jobi McAnuff, I thought would give us a place to build from.

"At times we've tried to play with the ball on the floor more, but I didn't think that we could with the full backs that we had, therefore the next step for me was to introduce players over time that can play that way. Mat Sadler is one for the future and John Eustace is a useful passer. The downside for us was losing Gareth Williams, because he was the start of it all for me.

"Where we are now, we have two styles of player. We have the more rugged athletic type that do a magnificent job and win games through graft, hard work and organisation, and those who are more gifted technically.

"The idea therefore is to get players that will work hard, have the physical attributes and are technically very gifted. Unfortunately for us they cost about £15m each."

And therein lies the rub, the age old problem of having champagne taste and lemonade money. That therefore means that we work with what we have, harder, on the training pitches. I can't help but wonder, just HOW do you go about changing the style of play? The intricacies of what takes place out there in the field.

"What changes is the way that you train, the hard work stays the same, but what changes is the way you go about how you train. There's no point practicing in training what you'll never do on the pitch in a game situation. It's all got to be aligned and therefore the passing practices and what we'll do, the way that we'll attack, will be looked at.

"We've always looked to counter attack and we've always looked to get the ball wide and to play from there, but now we're just going to adjust a few things. You can't throw the baby out with the bath water because a lot of what we do clearly works, otherwise we wouldn't be in the top five for 45 games of the season, or top for 90 days if we weren't doing something right.

"I think it's a case of adjusting it but as you can see from our games against Hull we had become predictable and that's why teams were set up against us and confidence waned because we didn't scored the goals that we should have done when we created openings. We have to adjust and adapt and do something different and that's what we're going to do."

Okay, so we've decided this is the path that we're going to go down. But if this is the right track to be on, why didn't we venture down it sooner?

"But then again, I'd like to think that shipping in six goals [against Hull City] vindicates my decision for not changing it earlier to be honest, but you do look back and you say yeah, I should have done it sooner, but the bottom line is, it's great to have that sort of hindsight.

"But when you're in it and you're just so worried about not making the play-offs because your form is so bad, you have the choice to change it completely with limited time on the pitch and risk it, or get into the play-offs and change it then.

"So we waited and changed it for the play-offs. People say they are big pressure games and yes they are, but if we'd have kept playing the way we were then we would have given ourselves no chance. I think over the two games, I thought we not only entertained but we played winning football, but for abysmal referring decisions and abysmal defending, it could have been oh so different, but it wasn't to be.

"The thing about playing direct football is that it limits the variables of the players, they've got to do three or four certain things every time they get on the ball. Everybody knows what everybody else is doing, which is the essence of team play, that's how the sum of the parts becomes greater than the whole.

"The thing about indirect football is that the player on the ball, first has to be gifted enough to deal with it and secondly, he has to make the right decision. But if he's got more than three or four decisions to make, then that means everybody else has got to react off of what he does. And without complicating it, because I'm not, it's simple - you've got more decisions to make.

"In our game against Hull, the two goals that we shipped at home were defensive errors, which you can clear up pretty quickly, because Dan Shittu was outstanding all season and then all of a sudden he's playing piggyback on Mat Sadler for the first goal.

"For the second one, we don't defend correctly for a throw and Andy Dawson overlaps and puts in a ball and then Leigh Bromby and Dan Shittu don't mark correctly.

"Up at their place, we're absolutely dominating the game, one defensive error from a punt up the field from Richard Lee and they get back in the game when they weren't in it at all. They were on their knees and suddenly it gives them a lift.

"So why more errors? Because we've got more decisions to make on the ball, three of those goals came from our mistakes and that's why Stoke have gone up with direct football, because they play a certain way and everybody knows what everybody else is doing and that is what team play is all about.

"So there's a lot of work to be done on the training pitch and in the classroom, but it's time to do it and that's why I think there'll be a transition and that's why I think that whilst we're making that transition, we might not get as many wins as what we did in the first few months of the season last time around, but if we can finish off the season at the top rather than start it at the top then I think everybody will be happy."

To read part two, click here.