Watford’s players have spoken about the club’s reputation for petering out towards the end of the season and they are determined to buck the trend this campaign.

Following last weekend’s victory against Leicester City, defender Craig Cathcart said the players are making sure that they do everything they can to finish the season as strongly as possible.

He said: “It’s something we spoke about – consciously amongst the players.

“We don’t want to just stop now, we want to carry on and see how far we can go.

“The manager has to take credit for it as well because he makes us focus on every game and take it one game at a time.

“Maybe in the past few years we got ahead of ourselves and looked too far ahead at certain fixtures and I think that’s not been the case this year and we’ve been focused on the challenge.”

Also being spoken about among the players is the possibility of playing in Europe next season with the players fully aware of what they could achieve if they maintain their form.

However, Cathcart insists the club are still not getting ahead of themselves.

He said:”It’s been mentioned around the squad – it’s something that doesn’t come around very often for players and to get the chance to play in Europe would be a great achievement.

“The whole squad, staff and club, want to play in Europe. It’s something we have spoke about but we can’t look too far ahead and where we are at the end of the season will look after itself.”