Watford showed top-six credentials in win over Middlesbrough – Tom Cleverley

Posted Sunday, October 06, 2024 by PA

Watford head coach Tom Cleverly felt his side defeating Middlesbrough 2-1 was the perfect response to their midweek woe.

The Vicarage Road outfit came from behind to defeat the Teessiders after a poor performance at Preston that Cleverly described as being that of a mid-table outfit.

With a win that extends their unbeaten run at home to 11 games and leaves them sixth, Cleverley felt his side are on the right track again.

He said: “That was more of a top-six performance.

“The quality of the opposition we were playing, to compete against that, you know you’re going to suffer some periods without the ball.

“Middlesbrough are one of, if not the, best team in possession in this division, that we’ve faced.

“To me that was a perfect way to respond, we showed our credentials today.

“The pace of Daniel Jebbison and Kwadwo Baah when he comes on, the quality and intelligence of Tom Ince, we can be a real threat.

“A lot of progress has been made with Baah in a short space of time, he was at Burton last year and his progress and attitude is top quality.”

After a first half lacking in quality and action, the game sprung into life eight minutes after the restart. A low free-kick from Finn Azaz was poorly dealt with by Ken Sema, who allowed the ball to roll under him for George Edmundson to poke home from close range.

Goalkeeper Jonathan Bond was called into a double save on 63 minutes, firstly parrying Emmanuel Latte Lath’s shot from outside the area then preventing Ben Doak from pouncing on the loose ball.

Watford needed inspiration, and they received it with 15 minutes remaining. After a fine run on the right, Ryan Andrews picked out substitute Edo Kayembe who fired home past keeper Seny Dieng.

The pace of fellow substitute Baah down the left was causing the Middlesbrough back line some issues and he grabbed the winner for the hosts with four minutes of regulation time left. A long throw from Andrews was flicked on by Mattie Pollock and Baah netted with a half-volley.

It denied Middlesbrough a third successive win but head coach Michael Carrick believed the performance of his side did not deserve a pointless return.

He said: “For three quarters of the game it was a good performance, so to sit here with nothing is very tough to take.

“There were a couple of things we didn’t help ourselves with, which we’ll need to look at – to let the game slip away from such a commanding position probably shows the level of performance we’ve had.

“It shows what we could be like if we’re not quite at it. There’s real big positives to take from it, but there’s obviously a big negative at the end.

“We should still be able to see it off, we may not be able to win by two or three or four but we need to kill teams off.”