Watford boss disagrees with John Eustace over penalty call.
Tom Cleverley disagreed with John Eustace and felt Watford deserved the penalty for handball against Blackburn Rovers.
The Rovers head coach was frustrated and angry after the match at a decision that he felt had cost his team the game. Eustace was adamant that it was a ‘very poor’ call from referee Darren England to penalise Ryan Hedges for handball.
Unsurprisingly, the Watford boss felt it was a penalty on first viewing. He did concede that it was probably a decision that would frustrate the opposing coach given the nature of it.
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“I certainly felt it was a penalty at the time though I’ve not had the chance to watch it back yet,” Cleverley said.
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“It sounds to me like it’s one of those where you feel hard done by if it doesn’t get given, but also hard done by if it’s given against you.
“I’m not complaining today because we’ve had a few decisions not go our way.”
The win for Watford continued their unbeaten run at home and ended the week on a positive after back-to-back away defeats.
“The foundation you need to be successful in this division is clean sheets and home form. We got both today,” he said.
“We needed that response and we are taking comfort from playing at home, and today I was pleased with the baseline of performance and the consistency of the basics.
“I thought we weren’t as good as we can be with the ball today, but we had that baseline because we competed, we ran, we concentrated at set pieces and sometimes that baseline of performance is enough to give you results in this division.
“We showed much better off-the-ball personality today, and were really hard to beat and hard to break down.
“There weren’t many chances on goal in the game from both sides and it was a really close affair that could have swung either way.
“Today it was our day and I was really pleased with the way we competed and did those basics that we didn’t show last Saturday.”
