Manuel Almunia believes Watford are “in a good way at the moment" and insists the Hornets should be pleased with Saturday’s 2-2 draw at Leicester City, despite conceding a last-minute equaliser.

The result at the King Power Stadium means the Golden Boys have now lost only two of their last six games in all competitions, which included two other difficult trips to Nottingham Forest and Manchester City.

Watford are now 14th in the Championship and 12 points away from the play-offs but Almunia believes there are reasons to be optimistic with 18 league games to play.

“The team is doing better,” said the Hornets captain, who suggested last month the team may lack leaders in the dressing room.

“The team is showing discipline, character, team spirit defensively and a good desire to get a result. We still have time to improve and we're in a good way at the moment.”

He added: “We are just focused on doing better every day, in training and in games, we can only look forward and try to keep this mentality and this concentration for 90 minutes.

“We need to keep the spirit, the team has been brave recently and I hope things will continue to get better.”

Danny Drinkwater’s superb strike in injury time denied Watford all three points at Leicester and the home side almost sealed a dramatic victory when David Nugent went close with the last kick of the game.

Moments before Daniel Pudil had also prevented a winner with an excellent interception and Almunia admits losing the game would have been too cruel to bear.

“It was disappointing to concede late but if they scored again in the last second we would be crying so we have to take the positives from the result,” he said.

“We would have taken a point at the start of the day and looking at the last action of the game, it was scary to see, they had the chance to score and for the game to finish.

“We would have killed ourselves if they had scored and Daniel [Pudil] was very brave to deny them another chance as well.”

Leicester, who are 11 points clear at the top of the Championship, only had three shots on target in the game and Watford looked comfortable for the majority of the second period.

Almunia believes the Hornets perhaps defended too deep late on in the match but says the only disappointment is the timing of the equaliser, rather than the result.

“It was difficult but the shame was that they scored at the end. If they had scored 30 minutes into the second half we probably would have been happy with a point so it’s positive,” Almunia continued.

“We were comfortable but we fell back to defend our goal which is dangerous because then any ball can be dangerous or we can make a mistake or anything can happen.

“But it’s normal, they are a great team, they are first in the league, they were playing at home and they were putting pressure on our box.”

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