IT'S a drizzle filled day in Austria, so Mat writes his latest entry from up in his room, although that's not entirely the real reason as to why he doesn't want to leave his plush surroundings. Sads takes up the story..

"Well here we are in Austria! The journey here was quite uneventful and I'm pleased to report that everyone was very well behaved. Heathrow Terminal 5 is as big and brash as I expected and I can give the Gordon Ramsey restaurant a big thumbs up.

"Me and Leigh Bromby bought matching Craig David-esque head phones at the airport to block out all the noise, which is handy when you room with him, although I've caught him putting them on and ignoring me a few times so far.

"As we pulled up to the hotel, we saw the steep incline of the mountain and one of the lads asked if anyone fancied venturing up it - to which Broms replied that he would, as long as he could ride in a gondola on the way up... to which he was told they were actually called cable cars.

"I'm rooming with Broms and because he's approaching his 29^th year now, he thinks he can pull rank over me, ordering me to empty the bin and such like.

"As for the work, Sunday was our hardest day's training yet. We had a double session in the morning, so the free time that we had in the afternoon was spent in our rooms recovering. We've got a games room downstairs but I honestly don't think any of the lads have got much use out of it because we are all dead on our feet.

"Although if truth be told, me and Broms are just flat out refusing to leave our room because we've been told that we're in the third best room in the hotel. Clearly the club are looking after their most important players. So with that in mind, we are going to get as much use out of our room as possible, I dare say a few miniature soaps may be going missing before the end of the trip.

"The training has seen a lot of ball work introduced quite early on. We've been talking about that and it's unanimous, we all prefer it that way and we've been doing a lot of one and two touch games in order to help the new style of play that we're adopting. But whatever we're doing, it's definitely hard work - a lot harder than other pre-seasons I've had.

"We've already sat down and underlined our objectives for the season and it comes as no great surprise that it's the same as last year - promotion. We let go all of the disappointment of last season in case there was any of it still lingering and now it's back to achieving our goals."

LET WATFORD BE THE PERFECT HOST