When you’re a football coach one of the duties is speaking to the media, and sometimes what you say can come back and bite you on the bum.

So it proved for Tom Cleverley on Saturday afternoon as, two days after talking about how he and the team had worked on preventing slow starts, he saw Watford concede early for the third league game in a row.

The reaction the Hornets boss said he expected from his players was clearly not to go a goal down after only four minutes against Coventry – the last three league goals conceded have come in a combined total of eight minutes from kick-off.

“I think when it happens once it’s just something that can happen,” said Cleverley.

“When it happens twice then you start seeing patterns and we have a bit of an inquest.

“But three times and you have to really review it, so we will go back and review our preparation throughout the whole week and throughout the whole day, and make sure we are in the mindset to come out like a sprinter out of the blocks.

“It’s something we have to review, but I don’t want to make it a thing with the players because you don’t want them to become fearful of the start of games.

“It can just be a review process of how we can do it better.

“The worrying thing for me as a coach is why we conceded such good quality of chances.

“We knew that they’d cross the ball more than any team in the division, and I’m disappointed at how many crosses we let come into our box – and more importantly how many first contacts they got on those crosses.”

The early goal was also something of a gift, as Coventry’s Ellis Simms headed home from a corner unchallenged.

“Let’s not forget the last however many corners we’ve faced, we’ve been excellent at defending them,” Cleverley pointed out.

“So I don’t want to make it a thing, but it is something we will address.

“We like to get better at every stage but there’s certainly not a pattern with defending corners poorly.

“It was a cheap goal, there’s no hiding from that, but it’s certainly not something where I’ll be pointing fingers at us because we’re bad at defending set pieces.”