New Watford head coach Nigel Pearson relishes the opportunity he has been given, knows the scale of the task he has taken on but believes it is one he and his players can achieve as the Hornets aim to retain their Premier League status.

Having published an extract of Pearson’s first interview on the Hornets’ website yesterday, the full-length version can now be viewed on the club’s YouTube channel.

The 56-year-old explained the possibility of becoming the permanent successor to Quique Sanchez Flores was not on the agenda until Thursday when he first picked up a message, but after a whirlwind few days he is only to aware results need to improve quickly if he is to guide Watford towards safety.

“I’m delighted to be here,” the 56-year-old said. “It’s an opportunity I didn’t expect. A week ago, a few days ago, I had no idea this opportunity would come around. It’s a really good one for me.

“Clearly our situation of where we are in the league and being adrift at the moment is a big concern, but for me I see it as a challenge which gives me the opportunity to work in the Premier League again with a very good club, with some good players. It’s a challenge that’s going to be a really tough one for us to overcome but I’m sure we can do it.”

Pearson has not been in a managerial role since he was sacked be Belgian side OH Leuven in February and he continued: “The important thing for me is how unique an opportunity it is. To be not working and then have a chance of working at a Premier League club is a great chance to get back in and re-establish myself.

“What I’ve seen of the club as well and we have good facilities, but there’s no doubt in my mind that our players have the capability to produce results which are better than certainly what we’ve got so far.

“You must have heard it many times about people talking about sides that are possibly too good to be in a relegation dogfight. We are where we are because we’ve not been able to produce the types of performances that have earned us enough points so far. So my job is to try and rectify that or help the players to get a level and organisation and belief back into in them that we are capable of competing.

“That’s the priority at the moment. It’s not to have a broad overview of the place, it’s to try and affect what happens on the pitch as quickly as possible.”

The Hornets are six points from safety following the weekend’s results and expanding on the challenge of what he has taken on, Pearson said: “We’ve got to change our fortunes pretty quickly. We’ll have to find a good run of results at some point as well, but there has to be a collective, not just a collective spirit because that’s easy to talk about, but we have to show a positive intent in games.

“Just the very situation that we are in and the number of points that we have and being adrift, it means that we’ve got to have a very strong mental approach to receiving setbacks as well. We’ve got to win games but we’re also going to have a few more setbacks along the way and we’ve got to be able to deal with that.

“It’s very clear in my mind that I’ve got to show some leadership qualities and I would presume that’s the reason why I’ve been brought in here, to attempt to do that.

“I’ve been in situations like this before as a player, as a coach and as a manager and what always strikes me and what I recall about these types of situations is that I understand the types of fears that people have and one of the big things is to try and alleviate those types of pressures on people so they can go out and perform because fear is a huge inhibitor of performance.

“I think that would be stating the obvious somewhat but I, and we as staff, will do everything we can to build the framework to allow the players to what they are paid to do and that’s to go out on the field and perform.”