Quique Sanchez Flores has spoken exclusively to Tales from the Vicarage about his season as head coach at Watford for a new book published this month.

The Spaniard left Vicarage Road in the summer after steering the Hornets to mid-table safety in the Premier League and taking them to only the fifth FA Cup semi-final in the club’s history.

Barcelona-based journalist Peter Jenson met up with Flores at the training ground of his new club Espanyol to ask him about his time in the Premier League.

“I loved the English culture in general,” said Flores. “I loved the organisation and the good manners. I valued hugely the way the fans were towards me.

“My first job was to find out everything about the club. I knew they had become a force in the eighties with players like John Barnes and Luther Blissett. That’s an era of football I love. But it was an interesting project for me. I went to the training ground and the more I saw the more I realised that Watford was going to be a really interesting challenge. It was also something relatively new because it was only the second time in my career I had taken over a team that had just won promotion. I was more used to taking over teams who were already competing in European competition.”

Flores explained that in discussions with Gino Pozzo it was made clear that the objective for the season was to stay up and he feels he exceeded expectations. “We started off playing in a league of four and we had to be top of that league of four [finish 17th]. Every single bookmaker had us as candidates for the drop. But what happened is we did not end up in a league of ten or 12 and in that league of 12 we finished seventh.”

In Tales from the Vicarage, he says the two highlights of the season were beating Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool 3-0 at Vicarage Road – “It wasn’t just a 3-0, it was a 3-0 that we really deserved. We thought we were capable of anything” – and winning the FA Cup quarter-final at Arsenal. He also explains how he was involved in improving the squad, revealing that he had the choice of signing two from Étienne Capoue, Valon Behrami and Benjamin Stambouli, who joined Paris St Germain from Tottenham. He also talks about how he felt as the season tailed off in the spring, which led to his departure.

“We were in the quarter-finals against Arsenal and I think with that [safety secured] we allowed ourselves to be distracted. We weren’t focusing on things in the same way in the second half of the season and so we lost something of the essence of what made us so combative and difficult to play against in the first five months.”

Tales from the Vicarage 5 features 16 original pieces of writing about Watford FC. It is available now from The Hornets Shop, Waterstones, Amazon and talesfrom.com/watford