Head coach Slaven Bilic may have given Watford fans a glimpse into the short-term future when he said he feels new loan signing Henrqiue Araujo and Keinan Davis could work as an attacking pairing.

The 21-year-old from Benfica is in the squad for tomorrow’s game at Middlesbrough while Davis is also travelling and looks set to return to action at some point at The Riverside after his recent hamstring injury.

Araujo – who spoke exclusively to the Watford Observer this week – has impressed in training.

“He’s sharp, he looks good and the work he does puts a smile on your face,” said Bilic.

“It’s only three or four sessions with us, and the questions still have to be answered: the boy has just turned 21, he’s moved from Portugal and he now has to do it on a higher level in competitive games.

“For Benfica, 90% of his games were for the B team. That is not uncompetitive but it’s not quite the same as the Championship.

“But I like what I have seen. He speaks really good English and when he talks to you he looks you in the eye. He doesn’t look or act like a kid, he’s very mature.

“His movement is top class and hopefully he’s going to hit the ground running. We don’t have big egos or bad apples here, so to gel into the squad is quite easy.”

With Davis now edging closer to his return, Bilic has two quality strikers at his disposal.

“I think they could work together as a pair,” he said.

“Maybe not right from the start, but when they have had time together and Davis is back after being out for a while, they would be comfortable playing together.

“They are not the same type of players making the same type of runs. They can play together.

“Davis likes to drop deeper, he likes to turn, he likes to be involved. Araujo does that, but he really likes to do his work in the box.”

With a new signing and a player returning to fitness, plus Hamza Choudhury came through 90 minutes last weekend and Hasane Kamara returned to the side after suspension, suddenly the list of unavailable players Bilic has had to contend with is merely the length of most other clubs!

“The situation is improving. No longer do we have 16 players out, we are down to nine or 10 and that obviously gives us more options,” he said.

“The situation is better but not great. It’s actually not even very good still, but it’s better. It’s certainly an improvement on what it was.

“Joao Pedro, Tom Cleverley, Imran Louza, Ken Sema – those four should be back in a couple of weeks’ time.

“They are going to start training with us now and we are not in a situation where we can afford to wait too much. It’s not September.

“We can’t ease them in with a couple of friendly games and then a couple of weeks of training. No, we need them straight away and we will need to be extremely clever to manage them.

“Maybe we will almost have to use two of them to make one player who can manage the whole game.”