It is perhaps a sign of the improvement in Watford’s away performances that when the final whistle blew at Stoke on Saturday there was disappointment.
Understandably, after dominating the game to leave with a point felt like the Hornets fell short of what they could have achieved.
But it was a second consecutive clean sheet on the road, and meant five points from three unbeaten away trips.
Watford had picked up five points from their previous seven away games before that.
“We’re a little bit disappointed that with the amount of control we had in the game we’ve not come away with all three points,” said Tom Cleverley.
“That’s a big turnaround from where we were away from home.
“The key now is to back it up with home wins, and we’ve got two home games coming up now.
“We’ve taken seven points out of our last three games.
“We can’t let what comes after the Luton game be an anti-climax, we have to back that up.
“Every game is worth three points, no game in terms of the league table is more important than any of the others.
“We have to back this good run up with some points from home games.
“Yes there’s frustration today, but if we continue to play like that in the last 11 games then I have no doubt we’ll achieve our goals.
“We have the firepower and we have the quality to score goals when you control games.”
The Hornets now look confident and comfortable in the shape they are being asked to play, and have an identity.
“I’ve got to take responsibility for that. We were trying our best for short-term results and I felt like a back three was the best way to do that,” said Cleverley.
“Now it’s not really how I see my team playing and I’m glad we’ve brought in some additions which allow us to play as a four and we’ve been excellent since moving to that.
“There is definitely a long-term process that I see as being successful and we’ll have a lot more good days than bad if we continue to play this way.”
The head coach explained why he replaced Giorgi Chakvetadze, who had been booked earlier in the game, with 15 minutes to go.
“When you’re trying to break a team down, with the ball-carrying qualities he has you’d keep him out there,” he said.
“But I felt like he only had one more foul left in him so I took the risk out of it.”
