'I’ll keep what happened in the dressing room within the dressing room'
Watford’s senior players were the ones that Tom Cleverley challenged most after yesterday’s 2-1 defeat at Burnley.
With so many young players in the team in an away game at a top side, the need for his experienced leaders to come to the fore was more important than ever.
However, as the tide of Burnley pressure swept over the Hornets the senior members of the team disappeared to a large extent.
“If you were in the dressing room, you’d have heard they were the players that I challenged,” said Cleverley.
“I’ll keep what happened in the dressing room within the dressing room, but I think when the going gets tough a few of our experienced players need to roll their sleeves up and really be our flag bearers in away performances.
“We didn’t show the ambition that I want us to.
“We work so hard to be competing at the top end of the table, whether people think that’s over-achieving or what.
“I don’t see budgets or how young our team was today. I don’t want those things to get into the players’ minds.
“At the end of the day they had 11 players who showed more character, more fight, more desire than our XI.
“There are players in the dressing room hurting.
“Not many people had us to be in the play-offs this season, and so they are a group of players fighting for the club and fighting for each other.
“But can we really do it when the going gets really tough? That’s still a question yet to be answered.”
The head coach admitted he considered making substitutions before half-time at Turf Moor.
“It’s something I’ve not done but I could have done, and that’s taken a player off in the first half,” he admitted.
“It was a system change that needed to happen and nothing to do with individuals, and Rocco Vata, who came off at half-time, was one of those I thought showed some spark.
“But we had to change system to try and manage so many midfield runners from Burnley.
“I thought it shored us up a little bit in the second half.”
That Burnley endured an edgy end to the game when Watford pulled a goal back was more down to them not being further ahead, which would have reflected their dominance.
“We gave it a good go in the last 20 minutes and caused a little bit of nervousness like we did in the Man City cup game,” said Cleverley.
“For large parts of the game we were second best though.
“Every game is worth three points and today we’ve missed out on getting anything and I think it’s a performance we will really regret.
“We’ve not come here with any ambition, personality, fight.
“I’m sure if we could play that game again we would.
“But we’re at home in three of the next four games so we’ll take comfort from that, but also know we need to improve in many areas in away games.”
