Now that they have sold Ashley Young, their best player, Watford FC are already planning ahead for next season conflicts, when they will launch an all out assault on the Championship with the division's biggest football war chest - and the most original young battlefield leader in modern football. Young boss Aidy Boothroyd (who since the middle of the 2005/6 season will only speak to the press in the form of haiku poetry) is a zen master of modern battlefield tactics:

"Confuse opponents
Spend no money on players
Leave them wondering"

Now that the club's economic strategy is being controlled by some financial planning software recently downloaded from the internet by the club's accountant, the money from the Young transfer has been put in the football warchest and hidden. Boothroyd insists it was always his intention to treat this year like guerilla warfare - get into the premiership, do a job and get out ASAP.

"Stress the positive -
Going to a better place,
Not relegation"

Add that money to the two £9million parachute payments they'll get for relegation this year and Watford will be a force to be reckoned with. When they drop in on the Championship next season, the other teams won't know what's hit them.

"Thirty million
Nearly enough for two teams
Of journeymen pros"