Just two days after his summer break began, Javi Gracia was already thinking about getting back to work with Watford.

Ahead of the Hornets' curtain raiser against Brighton and Hove Albion on Saturday afternoon, the head coach said he had been looking forward to the new campaign for quite some time.

The Spaniard wants to use the club's successes from last season, which saw them break the club's Premier League points, goals and wins tallies, as well as reaching the FA Cup final, as a yard-stick by which they can measure improvement this time around.

"When you finish one season, always you are thinking you need a break to recover a little bit and rest, but when you have been resting for two or three days, you start thinking again about the next game, about the squad, about the way to improve and about the training sessions.

"It’s our life, it’s our passion and then you always are looking forward to the next game because you miss the competition and you always want to start.

"It’s [last season] something that can help us to be ambitious and to keep the same desire and mentality we had in the past and the mentality we have to have in the future.

"We will try to be ambitious and really demanding with ourselves, like we did in the past. Now if we want to have a good future, it’s the right moment to do it.

"I think the players know it. They are training the right way to improve the results of the last season."

Gracia hopes new signing Danny Welbeck will be able to help his side find the net more often this season, but believes the new striker will not feature against Brighton, as well as several others who have "small problems."

"Some of them this week have little problems like Chalobah, like Domingos Quina, like Foulquier, like Penaranda but only little problems.

"Maybe they won’t be able to play next game, but I’m sure for the next week they will be ready. The rest of the team all of them are fit to compete.

"Danny arrived this morning and he didn’t train with the rest of the team yet. I think he will be better to wait for the next games, so we can first of all see how he is in this moment after the different tests he’s doing and after we’ll decide."