Slaven Bilic said he decided to make a double substitution at half-time – earlier than planned – because he wanted to lift a game that had become flat.

Watford had started the match brightly but as the first half wore on the game became somewhat lifeless with Blackpool snuffing out anything the Hornets had to offer.

Bilic sent on debutants Matheus Martins and Joao Ferreira after the break, and that lifted the performance.

“We started ok, moved the ball around, pressed them – but after that the game went a little bit flat,” admitted Bilic.

“They weren’t hurting us but we weren’t dangerous enough. That’s why we didn’t want to wait to make the changes – rather than wait to 60 minutes and see what happens, we decided to make the changes that we were planning to make later.

“We wanted to get players on so we had people closer to Sarr, people closer to the strikers. I looked and thought we didn’t need three centre backs also.

“The boys who came on made an impact straight away, and we were starting to mount waves of attacks – and then from one of them we got the first goal.”

With so many players ruled out, Bilic was delighted to see another example of his squad digging deep for a result, just as they had in the away game at Norwich.

“It’s a difficult situation we are in with regard to the squad we’ve had available to us for the last few games, and the next few games,” he said.

“In an extraordinary situation like this we need to display extraordinary qualities.

“When the squad is like it is, you cannot count on a lot of outstanding individual performances but what you are looking for is a performance as a team.

“What the team did today was create energy, especially in the second half, and I think the crowd saw that and responded to it.”