Just as the ball rolled to Jake Livermore before he scored his second goal at Loftus Road, the away fans – buoyed by his first strike five minutes earlier – let out a quite audible ‘shoooot’.

The midfielder obliged, found the same side of the goal and Watford were 2-0 up.

And if the fans were urging Livermore to shoot, then so was Valerien Ismael.

The head coach said after the game that at half-time he told all his players to let fly, having seen them produce only two off-target goal attempts in the entire first 45 minutes.

“I say this many times: the more you shoot at goal, the more chance you have of scoring a goal,” reflected the Watford boss.

“You are forcing the opponent to defend, there is always the chance of rebounds, and we are working on those sort of situations in training.

“We work to get our players into positions where they can take shots from outside the box.”

Looking back over recent games, the likes of Edo Kayembe, Ismael Kone and, most memorably, Wes Hoedt have all hit the net from long range.

“The goals today are not the first we have scored like that,” Ismael agreed.

“But we have to be sure that shooting is always in our mind and that we are always on the front foot, so that when we get the ball we play to shoot and put pressure on the opponent.

“It is our way of playing – we look to get our midfielders into shooting positions so that we can score from the around the box.

“The players know we will look to put them in shooting positions, and we say to them if you see the target then pick a corner and hit the target as hard as possible.”