Focus on unbeaten home run was creating 'a lot of noise' admits Cleverley
While Watford’s 17-game unbeaten run at home was statistically impressive, those who watched the matches were aware that visitors were not being comfortably swept aside at Vicarage Road.
Winning margins were predominantly one goal, and the Hornets lived on the edge at times.
Bearing that in mind, while seeing the run end was disappointing, was it also a necessary kick up the backside for the players?
“Potentially yeah, and while nobody ever wants to lose that sort of record and I wanted it to go on for as long as it could, it was starting to create a lot of noise around every home game,” admitted Tom Cleverley.
“That can be brushed under the carpet now and we can focus on winning each individual game, instead of thinking ‘oh we have to continue our run’.
“We’re now back to wanting to win to get three points in order to improve our chances of being in the top six.
“It brings a little bit of closure, and the focus now has to turn to can we change our fortunes away from home because it’s a busy month on the road: five away games in the next 28 days.
“It’s an area of our season we can largely improve.”
As well as away performances and results, the other factors that have dogged Watford – despite them spending all season so far in and around the top six – has been how they start games and their points return against lower-placed sides.
Changing and improving all three are within the gift of the squad and staff.
“Exactly, and this is when a part of my character says we’ve had a successful first half of the season but I’m not resting on it,” said Cleverley.
“I want to set out the areas where we can improve and kick on from here.
“I will demand that from the players and we will work on it a lot.
“The three areas that spring to mind are away form, first-half form and results against the bottom sides in the table.”
