For seven minutes last night, what had been a mixture of the worst nightmares and the gloomiest of doom-monger predictions looked like they could actually come to fruition.

Fuelled by the utter mess that was Watford’s contribution to derby day, the trip to Leeds was being tipped as a night when the home side could rattle up the sort of goal tally that requires the Sky Soccer Special videprinter to write the word in brackets after the figure, just to make clear it wasn’t a mistake.

And when it was 2-0 before the clock had ticked around to 8pm, there were shuddering flashbacks to Manchester City in 2019 when the home side were also two goals to the good in seven minutes.

At the Etihad that afternoon, a bad start did indeed become a mauling of epic proportions as the Hornets fell apart.

Last night at Elland Road, they dug in, rallied and could have gone home with a point.

Their reaction to such an awful opening period was in stark contract to the entire afternoon at Kenilworth Road.

On the back of what happened at Luton, we could have reasonably expected the two early Leeds goals to be the prelude to the sort of annihilation some had predicted.

That it didn’t happen is testimony to the fact there is some backbone in this squad, they do care and we have got players who get going when the going gets tough.

However, it is impossible to the talk about the better 80-odd minutes that followed without discussing why they were required.

For Dan Bachmann, it was quite possibly the worst seven minutes of his career, and the errors he made are hard to excuse given he is a professional goalkeeper.

In effect, they cost Watford a point at least, changed the course of the game before it had even taken shape and required his 10 outfield colleagues to dig him – and Watford – out of a hole the size of which Bachmann might have wanted to jump into as the home fans mercilessly harangued his every touch from then on.

He himself knows he will get abuse, and that pretty much goes with the territory although the rest of us who probably have also made similar king-sized cock-ups at work don’t have 30,000 people watching us and have them captured on film to be endured over and over again.

They are mistakes that will be criticised, and this report isn’t seeking to avoid that.

Nonetheless, Bachmann is also a Dad, a husband, a son, and a human being.

To see comments last night and this morning suggesting he deserves to suffer a serious injury, comparing him to Adolf Hitler and questioning him as a person are, quite frankly, sickening.

By all means criticise a bad performance, call out the mistakes, even question whether he should be dropped. That’s a judgment of Bachmann as a footballer.

But personal abuse on the level seen in the last 12 hours is unacceptable. There have been enough tragic stories involving famous people following cruel and twisted comments on social media that by now it’s amazing such abhorrent remarks are still apparently seen as reasonable banter.

Anyone making those most extreme comments in Bachmann’s directions can class their own performance as every bit as damaging to our club as that of the team on the pitch on Saturday.

Please, have a think. When commenting about a player, would you accept what you write if it were written about your brother, son, Dad etc?

As for those now suggesting Tom Cleverley’s time is up . . .

Well, while that’s not as evil as wishing injury on someone, and is an opinion on performance, it really does feel quite ridiculous.

How many of those now claiming a change is needed have also criticised Gino Pozzo for swinging the axe with alarming and often unjustified regularity in the past?

Unless expecting Watford to be in the top six all season, then surely where they are now is at least what was anticipated, or even exceeding it?

Of course, recent results and performances – which have been more bad than good – will always have a greater influence on opinion.

But if the Hornets had lost four of their first six and then won three on the spin – rather than the other way round – sitting above halfway would feel very different.

Yes, the performance trend has been on the down rather than positively inclined, particularly away from home.

But the second-half display last night hinted at a return to what was seen in August, even if further proof will definitely be needed against Blackburn at Vicarage Road on Saturday.

Cleverley is not perfect. He will make mistakes. The selection of Bachmann on Saturday was a case in point, and he probably didn’t help either of them with his comment that if ‘Dan is fit, he plays’.

It’s amazing how a few words can change so much – add in ‘and in good form’ after ‘fit’ and you have a statement that feels a lot more justifiable, reasonable and applicable to pretty much any player in any position.

For so long, as fans, we craved a young English manager who the club gave support and patience to. Enter Rob Edwards – and then exit Rob Edwards 11 games later.

Edwards took 14 points from his 10 league games, Cleverley has collected 16 from 11. Were those who think it’s now time for a change also advocating the removal of Edwards after such a brief spell in charge?

Maybe they were. Maybe they think that continually rolling the managerial dice is the best way forward but there is enough evidence in the past few seasons to suggest it probably isn’t.

It’s also worth considering the squad that Cleverley is working with.

Before a ball was kicked, more than £30m-worth of full international players left the club this summer.

Three players who would almost certainly have been first-team starters, all of whom had proven themselves very capable in the Championship.

Watford spent about £3.2m in return, with the signings of Pierre Dwomoh, Riccardo Vata, Kevin Keben and Kayky Almeida.

The latter two haven’t featured at all – judged on Under-21 games, Almeida needs an extended period of acclimatisation while Keben was signed with an injury but might be available for Saturday.

Dwomoh has played seven minutes of the cup tie at City, Vata has made eight league and cup outings totalling just over three hours.

Cleverley made decide to use them more in the coming weeks and months, but rightly he has not pitched them in too deep too early – and to do so right now, when the team is suffering, would be putting undue pressure on two young players.

However, the point is that Cleverley has been asked to assemble a squad of largely free transfer and loans which has allowed the club to enjoy a net gain of around £30m.

And he was inheriting a lop-sided, thin group that had just limped to 15th in the Championship – a squad that he galvanised over the closing nine games of last season.

It’s easy to forget he took over when Watford had just suffered their seventh defeat in 10 games, and the bottom three was becoming alarmingly into focus.

The head coach himself has talked freely about the inconsistency his team have shown. Their failure to do the basics well enough often enough. The need to show more grit and battle in away games.

But as stated earlier, unless you seriously believed that he could take a squad that was unbalanced and thin, which had finished 15th and won once in the league after Christmas at Vicarage Road, rebuild it in a few months with net income of £30m and be sat in the top six from August to May, then even mentioning change now should not be on the agenda.

Of course, as Watford fans we have become indoctrinated in the pattern of taking a series of managers on and off a hamster wheel and expecting it to generate success because of decisions from the very top.

The derby defeat will take a long time to get over for many reasons, but let’s not risk losing a talented and committed young coach – again.

Last night displayed there is depth to the squad too.

Both Festy Ebosele and Yasser Larouci showed that, if fit, they deserve a run. They have just three and six starts respectively but at Leeds they made the system Cleverley plays work by being able to balance the needs of defence and attack.

Kwadwo Baah was the Watford man of the match. He’s a beast, isn’t he?!

Pascal Struijk is no mug, but he struggled to contain Baah and it was noticeable that in the second half as soon the Watford forward got the ball Leeds sent two and even three players to deal with him.

He’s raw, he’s feisty to the point of possibly being easily provoked, but in the form he showed last night he’s also a matchwinner and a goalscorer.

A word too for Tom Ince, who was surely unlucky to have been dropped to the bench on Saturday having played so well against Middlesbrough.

He may have lost a bit of pace, but his guile and intelligence gain him a yard or two back. His delivery from set pieces is exceptional and a player of his experience is very useful to guide the likes of Baah and others.

The first 15 or 20 minutes after half-time last night were quite remarkable, as it felt like someone had muted the stadium noise.

Save for the sound of the admirable band of Watford fans, away to the right of the press box, Elland Road was strangely quiet after Baah made it 2-1.

Indeed, there was a palpable feeling of nerves and concern among the home fans who had been so noisy throughout the opening 45 minutes.

While the home side could possibly have been accused of easing off in the latter stages of the first half, they were simply penned back by Watford after half-time.

Had the Hornets managed to get level then it could have been a really fun ending to the game, but as time wore on and both sides made changes the momentum gradually swung back away from Watford and even with eight added minutes hopes of salvaging a point rescinded as time ticked away.

Notwithstanding that, had someone said the game would finish 2-1 and Watford might feel a little disappointed not to get a point when the second Leeds goal went in after seven minutes, they would most likely have been laughed out of Yorkshire.

This season, this squad and this head coach are all very much a work in progress.

We’ve seen the very good and the very bad. The marvellous and the moribund. The exciting and the excrement.

Whereas Saturday was losing in the worst possible form, last night was perhaps an acceptable face of defeat.

With where we have recently been and with what we have now, the current league position and points tally feels about par for the course.

The squad have shown us the full range of what they can do, in the positive and negative sense, and while last night was a loss it would be a very odd hill on which to kill some very evident green shoots of recovery, on and off the pitch.