Speaking to the media is one of the responsibilities of a football coach, and what you say can occasionally backfire.

So it proved for Tom Cleverley on Saturday afternoon, two days after discussing how he and the squad had fought to minimize poor beginnings, as Watford conceded early for the third league game in a row.

The Hornets manager stated that the reaction he wanted from his players was not to go down a goal after only four minutes against Coventry; the past three league goals surrendered had occurred in a total of eight minutes from kickoff.

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

“When it occurs twice, patterns emerge, and we have an inquiry.

“But three times means you have to really examine everything, so we will go back and check our preparation over the entire week and day, and make sure we are in the mentality to come out like a sprinter out of the blocks.

“It’s something we need to go over, but I don’t want to make it a habit with the players because you don’t want them to be afraid of the start of games.

“things might just be an assessment of how we can do things better.

“The most concerning issue for me as a coach is why we allowed such high-quality opportunities.

“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 somewhat of a gift, as Coventry’s Ellis Simms headed home uncontested from a corner kick.

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

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

“We want to improve at every level, but there’s no pattern to our terrible corner defence.

“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.”

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