At the end of the season, and certainly in years to come, it’s unlikely too many people will look at the league table and remember the intricate details of each game.

In every campaign there are matches you lose when you should have at least have taken a point, and others where you emerge with something but are left wondering quite how you did it.

The 2-1 win over Middlesbrough clearly fell into the latter category, although it was less that Watford played badly but more that they did what they had to do in order to get a result.

That’s often referred to as ‘winning ugly’, and while nobody wants to watch their team doing that week after week, there are situations where you need to adapt.

It led to one of those rip-roaring rousing finishes to a game that makes you want to get home and devour the highlights on TV, even though the bits you want to see are all at the end.

From the outset it was clear Tom Cleverley had set his team up in the expectation that the visitors would have more of the ball, and so they would need to sit in, soak it up and then use their pace and power to hurt Boro on the break.

Of course, there will be some who see that as a negative approach.

Personally I’d rather have a head coach who assesses each situation, applies the appropriate game plan and then helps his players execute it, than simply doing pretty much the same thing every game in the brazen belief it’ll all work out.

Watford clearly could have been far more attack-minded than they were, but had they done so and it had led to a 3-2 away win, would that have been more enjoyable?

Also, this was a more measured approach but also with a plan and a purpose. Last season, under Valerien Ismael, we often saw Watford perform as they did yesterday, but without the counter-attacking threat or the desire to do much more than retain possession in their own half.

Having said all that, the first half wasn’t a pleasant watch from a Watford perspective.

For the first 10 minutes they barely had a touch of the ball and over the 45 minutes the visitors had 68% of the possession.

However, it wasn’t like Jonathan Bond was in a shooting gallery and Boro were peppering him constantly.

They had a couple of good headed chances, though one was offside, and the Watford keeper made one fine save to hold a shot from the very impressive Micah Hamilton.

Despite being pinned back, the Hornets had an opportunity as good as anything the visitors mustered when Tom Ince lobbed just over the bar after Daniel Jebbison’s cross wasn’t cleared.

Jebbison had a mixed afternoon, where he veered from the very good to the underwhelming.

There was a moment in the first half where he got the ball down, turned and ran at the visitors defence with pace and strength he’d not shown before.

However, a key part of that No.9 role is to hold the ball up, and in that area he didn’t do so well.

When you are largely playing on the counter, the ball has to stick when it goes forward and that didn’t happen enough, meaning attacks couldn’t build and there was less of a breather for the defence.

The three at the back did well again.

It’s been almost obligatory to praise Angelo Ogbonna since he joined but once more he showed just why he’s had a career spent almost exclusively at the top level.

Alongside him Mattie Pollock continued to excel, and his power in the air coupled with an obvious determination to win everything he contests proved vital at the other end.

There was a pleasing return to form for Ryan Porteous too, who has hopefully put the events of the summer behind him and is back to the player he showed when he first headed south from Hibs.

Behind them, Jonathan Bond was something of an unsung hero. In fact, he’s not done much wrong since he came into the team, and yesterday he did all that was asked of him once again.

He had no chance with the goal that put Middlesbrough ahead early in the second half.

Tom Ince – who had an otherwise excellent game – picked the wrong moment to try and back-heel his way out of trouble in the corner, and that led to a free-kick being conceded . . . though like a number of decisions referee Matt Donohue made, even that was questionable.

However, when the ball was delivered into the box it kicked up off the pitch and Ken Sema’s attempt to clear only saw the ball clip the inside of his thigh and land right at the feet of George Edmundson, who really only had to let the ball hit him on its way into the net.

It was a howler from Sema, which was a pity, as he did an admirable job of marshalling the extremely tricky Ben Doak.

The Swedish international stuck manfully to the task after a testing opening 10 minutes, and while Doak always looked threatening it’s testament to the job Sema did that he didn’t produce a great deal and the winger was eventually substituted with 25 minutes to go.

Substitutions played a big part in the final outcome of the game, as Middlesbrough boss Michael Carrick withdrew both Doak and Hamilton, a suggestion he felt his best way of winning the game was to sit on the 1-0 lead he had.

However, they were the pair that were causing the most trouble and that decision, along with Cleverley’s three substitutions, were pivotal.

Bond still had to make his major contribution of the afternoon when he pushed away a 20-yard effort from Emmanuel Latte Lath and then was quickly back on his feet to deny Doak on the follow-up, but after that the pendulum swung very much towards the Hornets.

Although many fans won’t want to admit it, Watford looked a more cohesive attacking unit with Vakoun Bayo on the pitch.

It’s impossible to ignore his misses at Preston and Sheffield United, but it seems his presence on the pitch makes it more likely his teammates will score.

Undoubtedly he’s got to deliver goals, but while he’s contributing something then he deserves to be cut a little slack at least.

The equaliser was immaculate from start to finish. Tom Dele-Bashiru drove forward from left to right and slipped the ball to one of those three subs, Edo Kayembe.

He moved it out to Ryan Andrews on the right, and then continued his run in order to receive a return pass on the edge of the box.

One touch to get the ball out of his feet, a second touch to hammer what is now becoming a trademark shot into the bottom corner.

Boro keeper Seny Dieng may well feel he should have done better, but he’s not the first keeper this season to find the sheer ferocity and accuracy of a Kayembe piledriver too much for him.

He made up for it a couple of minutes later, diving low to his right to tip away another fine low drive from Kayembe as Watford, revitalised by the changes, spent 15 minutes doing to Boro what they had done themselves for the first hour of the game.

When the winner came, it took me back to the days of Graham Taylor’s Watford when I was a young lad stood on the corner of the Vicarage Road terrace near the Shrodells Stand.

Back in those days, how many times did we see a long throw from Steve Sims flicked on by Ross Jenkins or John Barnes and rifled home by Luther Blissett?

The names may be different, but the effectiveness and simplicity of perfectly executing that sort of move has spanned many decades – and when performed as well as Watford did it yesterday, it will always continue to be an excellent route to a goal.

Andrews hurled the ball in, Pollock surged away from the by-line and stretched to flick it on near the corner of the six-yard box and Kwadwo Baah athletically hooked a volley past Dieng.

There was simply nothing much Boro could do about any element of the goal because Watford did it so well.

Baah’s finish was superb, and was just the fillip the forward needed after his first league start at Preston didn’t go as planned.

He posted an apology to Watford fans on his social media channels after Wednesday's games, but what he delivered yesterday was more than enough to forgive him for being sucked into an all-round bad night at Deepdale.

Being an ‘impact sub’ may not be what Baah wants at the moment, but his rise from not playing at all for Watford in two seasons to suddenly being on the threshold of being a starter has catapulted him a long way quickly.

His power and pace, coupled with the sort of finishing he displayed for that winning goal, clearly show he can be quite some player.

But with Giorgi Chakvetadze, Rocco Vata, Kayembe and Ince all in the squad, there is no need to force Baah to continue his progress at a faster rate than he is already.

It all combined to extend Watford’s unbeaten run at Vicarage Road under Cleverley to 11 games, seven wins and four draws.

The eleven home games before he took over delivered just one win (against Chesterfield in the FA Cup) and six defeats.

That is undeniable progress, and while the manner of the win over Middlesbrough was more about patience and perseverance than playing the visitors off the park, how we would have taken any sort of scrappy, barely-deserved three points during that dreadful run of home games at the start of this year.

As a young coach, Cleverley will make decisions and while many will work out perfectly, others won’t.

The difference with more experienced coaches is the ratio between good and bad decisions is generally more favourable – even the oldest and wisest of managers will still get things wrong though.

Similarly, he is working with a squad of players that are in the Championship for a reason: because at this moment in time, they’re not Premier League standard.

Some are on the way up, others have reached the summit of their capabilities, and a few are heading towards the twilight of their careers.

It’s the same throughout the Championship, although some teams use things like parachute money or a new owner to make a difference, and others – such as Ipswich – patiently build momentum founded on continuity.

There are some stronger squads and some weaker squads in this division, but any of them really can beat any of the others.

The teams that do best will be those who consistently perform to a high standard and execute the game plans worked on with their coaches more often than others.

Cleverley has got Watford winning again at Vicarage Road, the whole place is bouncing and happy again.

He is aware he needs to do the same with away performances – and we all know how significant the next of those is.

However, as we head into the international break, let’s think back to the summer and what the expectations and predictions were then.

With 20% of the season gone, Watford are in the play-off places and three points off the top. I reckon we’d all have taken that in August.

After all, there are clubs who were apparently building a Championship super-team that was a shoo-in for the top six currently languishing in 21st.