Head coach Valerien Ismael said his side will continue to play on the front foot rather than try to be more negative in order to eke rewards out of the two upcoming away games at Sunderland (tomorrow) and Cardiff (Saturday).

With a run of 12 away league games without a win and no clean sheets during that period, Watford have not been happy travellers.

You have to go back to January 2 to find the last time they took three points on the road, and having conceded 11 goals in their last five games they could be forgiven for adopting a more safety-first approach.

That seems unlikely though.

“I think you have to find the right balance, you don’t need to change everything completely,” said Ismael.

“We are an attacking team so we don’t want to become a defensive team. It’s just we need to find the correct balance.

“The Championship has evolved. A lot of teams play with a back four, and you can see the influence of the Premier League has dropped into the Championship.

“The ways of people like Pep Guardiola and Roberto De Zerbi have seen more teams use that build-up, overload the midfield.

“You just have to adapt and evolve your game to make sure you make the right decisions.

“It’s interesting to see every game and learn from every game, and hopefully to improve from every game.”

One win in the last eight league games could easily have a negative effect on morale, but the Watford boss says that’s not the case.

“The confidence is still high, it’s not like we are desperate or depressed,” he remarked.

“We are frustrated because we know we can do better, and we have to. It’s a case of refocussing after each game, one after one.

“We know you can get a quick turnaround of results in the Championship, and that is our belief.

“It has been mainly recovery time between games, but today we had a session and went through our game preparation, and our plan for tomorrow before we started the long journey across England.”

That long journey started this lunchtime (Tuesday), with the players spending the next two nights in the north-east before heading west and making a portion of their journey towards Wales.

They’ll then spend another night away, before heading to Cardiff on Friday ahead of the game the next day.

A mini training camp was the way Ismael described it, adding that Ken Sema may be part of his plans at Cardiff.

“Ken looks good. He had a scan a few days ago and everything is fine,” he said.

“Now it’s a case of day by day to see how he gets on, and we’ll see if there is a possibility for him for the game at Cardiff on Saturday or not.”

The last away trip saw the Hornets crumble at Leeds, with skipper Daniel Bachmann admitting some of the players looked a bit scared.

The crowd and noise at Ellan Road is intimidating, but a midweek visit to the noisy cauldron that is the Stadium of Light is potentially even more difficult.

“Every player wants to play football at the highest level, and they look forward to the big games,” said Ismael.

“These are the real games with the atmosphere, and you need to step up.

“It’s another chance for the players to learn from the previous away game because that was not what we expected.

“Now we have the chance to do it better, and we will do it better.”