Caleb Wiley's full debut was a positive on Saturday. _(Image: Action Images)_
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In the aftermath of a 0-0 draw with the team bottom of the league, it is often a struggle to find any positives.
However, the return of one player from injury, the emergence of a youngster that has come through the Academy and a full debut for a loanee were what boosted Tom Cleverley.
“We’re all really excited and hopeful that Kwadwo Baah can see out the rest of the season, because he’s a devastating player who brings that cutting edge that we’ve lacked," he said.
“But I was really pleased with Zavier Massiah-Edwards as well: he’s someone who has trained really hard recently and shows intensity in his work.
“He make those penetrating runs, he does press with intensity, and he was really clean on the ball.
“He worked under me previously in the Academy, and it shows the continuity we’ve got as a club as well.
“The young players have the demands of Matt Bevans, then Charlie Daniels and then myself, and it’s all really consistent.
“I’m sure he won’t be the last young player we’ll see feature between now and the end of the season.
“So there were some positives from today, as well as the full debut for Caleb Wiley.
“I was really pleased with Wiley. I thought he showed a lot of quality.
“He represents what I’m about: if you show it on the training pitch, if you show great attitude playing 45 minutes for the Under-21s, then he deserves his chance.
“I thought he was excellent today.”
Crumbs of comfort were far harder to find from the first half though, when nobody in a Watford shirt seemed willing to try and get hold of the game.
“I thought Mattie Pollock did well in that respect, and he played some lovely passes through the lines,” said Cleverley.
“Imran and Tom showed personality to get on the ball, there was nothing wrong with that.
“We just lacked intensity, and we made unforced errors which really relieve pressure on the opponents.
“If a foul or a throw-in follows an error then it’s a minute or 90 seconds taken out of the half.
“We did make far too many errors and didn’t create enough intensity ourselves when we had the ball.
“We demanded that in the second half and we saw it, but we wasted 45 minutes.”