International breaks often feel like impositions on the domestic season. They’re too-frequent sideshows that disrupt the flow of what most of us are actually interested in. But last week, the final pause of 2018, has given everyone - fans and clubs alike - one last chance to breathe before what will be for Watford a season-defining month.

Looking at results, it would be easy to surmise that we’re heading down a familiar road. As the leaves come off the trees, so too, traditionally, do the wheels from Watford’s Premier League campaigns.

This is the club’s best ever start to a top flight season, 20 points after 12 games eclipses even the high water mark in the 80s, but we’ve thought before that we’ve finally cracked the secret to a consistent, top-half season.

This is a pivotal time of the season, especially as the core of this Watford team has been here for each of those Winter downturns. And the signs are… iffy.

Trips to Newcastle and Southampton should have yielded more than a point. For little guys riding high in the big leagues, maintaining momentum is key, and taking care of business against struggling sides is essential.

Because we know that this Watford squad has quality. It is the most talented group of players the club has ever pooled together and is capable of breathtaking passages of play. But what we don’t know is the mental resilience of the side, and how they will cope with a run of disappointing results.

Gerard Deulofeu is a case-in-point. He is a supreme talent, with genuinely frightening pace and when he engineers an isolated one-on-one it generally means curtains for the defender. But the reason that he isn’t showing off these talents at a top club - yet - is that he lets mistakes get on top of him.

At both Newcastle and Southampton breaks in the first ten minutes put the Spaniard through on goal. Up North he skewed a tame shot wide and then on the South coast straight at the keeper. In both cases, had they gone in, you would have expected Watford to go on and win comfortably. But the chances were missed, Deulofeu receded into himself, and spurned early misses proved costly.

This is pretty much a microcosm of how Watford’s last three Premier League seasons have gone. In each, the turning points have been luck turning and a few results slipping through the fingers. These results have seen good vibes turn sour and good seasons come a cropper, and we’ll have to be on our guard to make sure it doesn’t happen once again.

But this is by no means all doom and gloom. A huge run of six games until Christmas could just as easily lift us back into the national headlines as end hopes of Europe, and the big difference between this and previous seasons is the depth of quality running throughout the squad and the genuine competition for places all over the pitch.

Troy Deeney will probably come back into the side for the Liverpool game, taking some pressure off Deulofeu. But Isaac Success has shown that he can play more than a supporting role up front, and Andre Gray has done nothing to deserve his reduced playing time of late.

While injuries have been a running plot point of the last couple of seasons, this campaign should see the squad bolstered as the nights roll in with the return of Nathaniel Chalobah - an England player no less - and Tom Cleverley, who you may have forgotten existed.

Together with Etienne Capoue, the player of the year so far, and the shop-windowed Abdoulaye Doucoure, those four present a midfield corps that would be the envy of most in the land. That competition should be enough to ward off too much of a downturn in performances and that’s not even mentioning the weekly selection dilemmas that Javi Gracia has across the back line.

We now go into a tough run of games, hosting the league’s two best sides - Liverpool and Man City - as well as trips to Leicester and Everton that will both be high on emotion for very different reasons.

With a dodgy last few weeks, points need to go on the board to get us back on track. And if we can get through this month in good shape the sky (well, seventh place) is the limit.