While Saturday’s 3-3 draw with Coventry might have been a disasterclass in making mistakes from both teams and the match officials, preventing them is a painful process that has to be gone through.

That was the view of head coach Valerien Ismael after watching his side directly play a part in all three Coventry goals after the Hornets had gone ahead three times.

The thing is, how do you stop those errors?

“That’s always the question, but there’s not training session called ‘avoiding mistakes’. It doesn’t exist. There is no vaccine against mistakes,” said the Watford boss.

“It is just a case of, as I have said, better decision making.

“I bet next time players will take the right decision, and that is always the process.

“It is what I keep talking about. We need to go through a process, and sometimes the process is painful.”

Any neutral inside the Coventry Building Society Arena would probably have left after the final whistle feeling thoroughly entertained, and Ismael said there were positives to be had.

“I thought it was a great game. Great attitude from the players, and we played some great football,” he said.

“On the positive side we scored three goals in a tough away game, and came back into the game every time and took the lead three times.

“Rajovic scored two goals and we saw how important our No.9 is for our game.

“The attitude of the players to come back after the second goal, a silly goal, was great.

“So I saw a lot of positive facts, and we also had to fight against refereeing decisions today. It was unbelievable.

“Overall I think we are still moving in the right direction and I get a good feeling. Unfortunately it is now showing in the table at the minute.

“But now we will have a break to recharge the batteries and analyse everything, and then we’ll be ready to go again.”