Should Watford be leading at half-time at St Andrews tomorrow afternoon, it will be the first time they have done so in an away game this season.

In fact, the Hornet have only been in front twice after 45 minutes all season long.

It smacks of being slow out of the traps and overly cautious, and it’s on the list of things interim head coach Tom Cleverley wants to change straight away.

“It is something I am keen to address,” he said.

“It’s not good enough, is it? Plain and simple.

“Whether the players are feeling they want to pace themselves through a 90-minute game, or they want to ease their way in I don’t know.

“What I do know is the Championship doesn’t work like that.

“It’s chaos for 15 minutes, plateaus a bit, then more chaos when everyone gets their second wind.

“You have to be ready, like a sprinter out of the blocks, to go from the first whistle.”

Of course, he is trying to help change the course of the season for a group of players that he was one of last season.

He’s gone from the dressing room to the office, and now eats at the manager’s table in the canteen.

“The dynamic has changed, I’ve felt that,” he admitted.

“But I have a lot of trust in the staff and the players here. I’m not going to start trying to control everyone and what they do.

“I trust everyone to do the jobs they’ve been employed to do, and I’ll help them do that and try to create a game-plan that sees us winning games.

“Everyone from every department within the club I have a lot of trust in. They’re good people who are good at their jobs.

“I feel like that’s the best style of management.”

One fear is that with a truly brutal looking set of fixtures coming up after the international break, Watford could be sucked into a relegation battle which, currently, is at arm’s length thanks to a seven-point gap and several teams between them and the bottom three.

Was relegation something discussed when he spoke to the owner and chairman?

“Not at all. It’s not gone through my head,” Cleverley said.

“I’m trying to be positive as the coach, looking at how many games can we win and always focussing on the next one.

“I want the team to play without any fear, and I’ve been in plenty of relegation battles to know that when you start checking other team’s fixtures then the fear creeps in.

“You get anxiety in your performance and that’s not a good environment to work in.

“So there’ll be no mention of that coming from me, and I want the players to go and play with the shackles off.”