What Cleverley would have liked, and what he's got, are two different things
He said he would like reinforcements before the game at Cardiff, but Tom Cleverley will be getting on the bus to south Wales without any new players to select.
The midway point of the January transfer window is only a couple of days away and while the Hornets are not alone in having made no recruitments, 14 of the 24 clubs in the Championship have.
Cleverley remained phlegmatic when discussing the situation this morning.
“Now it’s my job to just focus on what I have,” he said.
“I’m not going to sit here and cry about it.
“It would have been nice but I feel like we’re doing a lot of what our players can’t do at the minute.
“They’ve got us into a decent position to attack the rest of the season so it’s my job to focus on what the players can do and why they’ve got us into this good position.
“That is the reset button that I was talking about when we had this break from the league.
“I’ve had a period of reflection, move forward and I’ll worry about the transfer market after the game tomorrow.”
No signings in the first 13 days of January doesn’t mean nothing is going to happen in the remaining 18 days.
“Obviously competitors for our targets are already doing business now, but there are discussions and there is hard work happening,” said Cleverley.
“I can’t fault the hard work of people to try and get improvements in.
“It’s not happened before this game and so I have to get on with it and concentrate on what we have.”
When players arrive during the summer window there are often weeks or even months to integrate them.
How quickly can a player signed in January be selected for a game?
“I would say before starting a game, a couple of days; before being on the bench, maybe a day,” Cleverley replied.
“I think when I first came here on loan I had one training session and started against Nottingham Forest.
“But we’re talking about players who are ready. For those timescales, in terms of fitness, they have to be ready.
“It can’t be someone who is coming here off the back of an injury or a player who hasn’t played all season.
“It obviously helps if the player knows the league as well.
“Fit and ready to go, with experience of the league, we’d need one training session to get them involved.
“It’s a very good question as there are a lot of different variables that play a part in deciding whether a player can go in after one session or if he needs a couple of weeks.”
While Watford go west for tomorrow night’s game without any new signings, they do have a very important ‘12th man’ man, to coin a somewhat hackneyed old phrase.
While there won’t be 4,000+ plus heading to Cardiff, the sight and sound of the travelling support at Fulham last week meant a lot to Cleverley, his staff and players.
“As I commented on social media, my first post for a long time, it genuinely made me proud to be the head coach of this club,” he said.
“The run we’re on is a time where everyone in the club has to stick together and that’s fans, staff, players and the club.
“It’s a really important time for us to do that.
“In the past I’ve seen situations where chanting can be sarcastic, but it wasn’t on Thursday.
“There was the numbers we travelled in and also the manner of the support was very, very pleasing.
“It’s shows we are together, and trust me when I say that me and the players feel that.”
