At the end of the Carabao Cup up win over Plymouth, James Morris was announced as Man of the Match – but one person who didn’t hear that was . . . James Morris!

“Was I?” he laughed.

“I didn’t realise that! I’ll take that all day long.”

The 22-year-old gave one of his best Watford performances as he continues to grow into the role of playing on the left of a back three, helping the team to keep their third clean in four games.

“I’d never played there before MK Dons in the last round, and I really enjoy it,” he confessed.

“I get a lot of the ball with the way we play, and that’s what I enjoy most.

“It’s been really enjoyable playing there.

“I’m feeling really confident and it’s been great to get a run of games in the team, and with that run of games comes more confidence. It’s been good.

“When you’re playing week in week out you get into the rhythm of things and that just brings more confidence.

“The key thing is to keep doing that and keep performing well.”

It never felt like victory was seriously under threat against Plymouth, and in the second half it was hard to see how the visitors could break through.

“I think that belief is starting to come now, and the confidence in the team means that when we go a goal up we feel like we’re going to win the game,” said Morris.

“There is that line between becoming complacent but we’ve got it spot on at the minute.

“We do the basics right and that’s earned us another clean sheet to add to the ones we’ve had already this season.”

Morris said that what fans are seeing now is the result of work that started way back in the summer.

“We had a really solid pre-season and worked really hard tactically and physically,” he reflected.

“And then confidence has really built up.

“When you’re winning games that confidence quickly grows, and then performances keep getting better and better.

“We’ve worked on so many patterns and tactics in training that we all know exactly what we’ve got to do, and so when the ball comes to me I know where people are going to be and where the runs are.

“I think that has shown in the games we’ve played because of the way we’ve passed the ball, and in our style of play generally.

“That’s only down to the work we do in training.”

As well as the hard work in the summer, there were some frank conversations about the awful home form and performances of last season.

“It was one of the main things that we spoke about in pre-season,” said Morris.

“Our home form wasn’t good enough, and we wanted to turn this place into a fortress.

“We’re on the way to doing that. Obviously it’s only four games at the minute, but it’s four wins and we can only continue to keep doing that.

“With the fans behind us like they have been it’s only going to get better.”

Sunday, away at Sheffield United, will probably be the toughest test so far.

“If we can go six from six then obviously that’s the best start we could have asked for,” said Morris.

“It’s going to be a tough game away from home against a really good side but I think we’ve shown we can compete at any level, and we will be ready to go.”