The 1-0 defeat at Portsmouth was another tough lesson for the six Watford players aged 21 and under that started the game at Fratton Park.
Although there is a clamour for even more, younger players to get game time, the Hornets already fielded a particularly youthful team on the south coast.
They endured not only a defeat, but an incorrect red card and a hostile home crowd: a steep learning curve for half a dozen who are still eligible to play for the Under-21s.
“I’m not making excuses for us as a group today,” said Tom Cleverley.
“We have at our disposal what we have, and that is a lot of young players.
“So they need to learn quickly about how to manage games, environments and referees.
“We are behind the eight-ball in terms of that: in the 10 minutes of stoppage time I think one minute of football was played.
“It showed how experienced they are at managing a game. Our young lads need to learn that.”
Even in defeat and with 10 men, Watford showed glimpses – albeit too few – of being able to stretch the home side.
“It’s fine margins between everyone outside the top three,” Cleverley pointed out.
“When we start as poorly as we did with less intensity and not enough appetite to play through the lines then you risk conceding the first goal.
“I thought they deserved the first goal even though it did come from a mistake.
“We lack the key to open defences up at the minute.”
The head coach made a number of changes to his starting line-up, both enforced and of his own choosing.
“It was the second game in four days and there were people who deserved their chance,” he explained.
“It’s absolutely not just making changes for the sake of it.
“We are all desperate to win these games but we must do more if we want to do that.”
The only goal of the game came after an error from keeper Egil Selvik, whose scorecard has been largely blemish-free since he came into the team.
“He had a fine performance after that and we won’t be focussing on the mistake whatsoever,” said Cleverley.
“Since he has come here we’ve looked very solid and kept a lot more clean sheets.
“There will be absolutely no finger-pointing towards Egil, and it’ll probably be the last place I start when I debrief our first-half performance.”
On Friday against Burnley, Watford began the game on fire – four days later at Pompey, they limped into the contest.
“I think the thing is we can’t get a complete performance,” said Cleverley.
“We had our best start to a game against Burnley, and then second half we fell apart.
“We just haven’t got enough to put in complete performances.
“It’s my job to keep developing the young players who will be a year wiser, and I don’t want to keep putting things on them – it was two of our more experienced pros who made mistakes on Friday.
“But we have craved the complete performance, we train to be perfect and we just haven’t been there enough on matchdays this season.”
