For once head coach Slaven Bilic was able to talk about a player returning to action this morning, but that was somewhat tempered by the news another was ruled out.

Hamza Choudhury is expected to be involved when Watford host Blackpool at Vicarage Road tomorrow, but Leandro Bacuna’s hamstring injury picked up in the FA Cup tie at Reading was confirmed.

“Leandro’s is only a small injury, but it is still an injury and so he will miss the game tomorrow,” said Bilic.

“Hamza is the only one who is back training with us and so we’ll see tomorrow. He has done a couple of sessions and he looks good.

“We should have had Kayembe back but he hasn’t responded to treatment as we thought he would, but he is going to be the next one back in a few days I think.”

Bilic believes the performance and result gained in the face of adversity at Norwich can inspire his players.

“We showed against Norwich that in difficult times and extraordinary situations that require character, team spirit and hard work from the boys that we can do what is required and win the game,” he said.

“It’s all about the next three games. In that period we expect most of the injured players to come back, at least to be training.

“Next back should be Davis, then Louza, Cleverley, Pedro. The Davis injury is quite a minor one but the problem there is that he has not been in because he has been ill. He’s only missed a couple of days but that means his treatment is put back a couple of days as well.

“We were expecting Davis to be available for the game against Rotherham but now we don’t know because he has been sick.”

After the game at Reading, Bilic said he wanted “answers” as to why the squad has picked up so many injuries.

“We have talked about injuries and had some meetings,” he said.

“There is not one thing, there is a combination of things. If it was just one thing we’d know and we’d have sorted it out.

“We have changed some things a little bit – a little bit of this, a little bit of that, hoping that it will make a difference.

“The problem with injuries is that first and foremost you can’t stop training. We have to train, we can’t walk on eggs.

“Then in some games recently, we have had to ask more of some of the guys, to get them to do more in games than they would usually do.

“We have to get through this period. We ain’t going to moan because we can’t change it but we can influence things big time on the pitch.

“We know what we can do because we had a good example in our last league game at Norwich. We were in a similar situation before that game, then it got worse during the game and still we resisted and we ended up with three points.

“If we do what we know we can do, and what is required of us, then we can win games against any team.”