The win over Blackburn Rovers was definitely not enough for Tom Cleverley to cast aside what had happened at Kenilworth Road a week earlier.

While the Hornets head coach didn’t want to rake over the coals of the derby day disaster, when it was put to him that the defeat could be forgotten now he was quite clear it shouldn’t be.

“I’d disagree with everything being forgotten. That has to be a serious wake-up call for all of us that performance at Luton,” he said.

“It’s by no means forgotten, but we’ve responded in an impressive and pleasing way.

“At Leeds I thought the performance was there, today the result was there.

“I said to the boys that there’s a baseline of performance you must hit.

“When I talk about consistency, if you think the second half against Stoke was 100% of our potential, there has to be a point around 60% of your potential as a team that you don’t drop below.

“Preston and Luton we were way under it and that can’t happen in this division.

“Today I thought we bottomed out at 60% because we did all our basics well and competed, but without being as good as we know we can be on the ball.

“We got the job done today.”

The Watford boss switched to 4-3-3 during the second half.

“It’s something that we know suits some of our players, Vata and Baah especially,” he said.

“For that we lose an extra defender, so we needed to puff our chests out and take a bit of a barrage of set pieces at the end, and we did that.

“It’s good to have the option to move as a four and it’s something I’ll continue to look at as a Plan B moving forward.”

The Hornets have now won five of their six home games, but only one of their six away games.

“We know where we need to improve away from home, and we have a week to work on that before two big away games,” said Cleverley.

“We’re a bit like our opponents today and that seems a bit of a theme this season, where home form is a big advantage.”

The manager of those opponents, John Eustace, was bitterly disappointed that referee Darren England awarded the penalty, claiming the officials had cost his side the game.

“Rolling back the years, 15 years ago to this day I was probably watching John Eustace hammer a referee on a pitch somewhere!” Cleverley laughed.

“Things don’t change with time.”