Reaction: Hamer & Livermore Discuss Stevenage Defeat

Goalkeeper Ben Hamer and midfielder Jake Livermore gave their verdict on Tuesday night’s Carabao Cup exit at Stevenage (August 8), with Watford falling short in a penalty shoot-out after a 1-1 draw at the end of the normal 90 minutes.

Read what the duo had to say below…

We started well, we got a goal early doors and we thought we were going to settle into the match. Then after about 30 minutes they started playing their game a bit with the long balls, and we struggled to deal with it. I thought the strong start would have given us the confidence we needed to kick on, and we were still passing the ball around well and getting into nice areas, but sometimes things don’t quite go to plan. Things can happen, like a free-kick which gets the home crowd going, and then that somewhat turns the tide.

Even though they didn’t really create loads of chances it was disappointing to concede in the manner we did - we’ve been working on set-pieces a lot, but with zonal marking sometimes balls can just drop down into a bad area where one of their players is standing. Credit to their man for finishing it off. In the second half I don’t think they threatened that much, but when it goes to penalties it’s a lottery. They took theirs well and unfortunately it didn’t go our way.

Going forward I think we just need to work on being a bit calmer - me included. It’s a game we have to learn from, but on the positive side from a personal point of view it was good for me to get out on the pitch and see the big following we had tonight. The fans were brilliant, so thanks to them.

The training’s been brilliant - all throughout pre-season and into the first couple of weeks - and I’m sure the supporters got a great snippet of that at the weekend against QPR. The manager’s brought some really good ideas to the training ground and the lads have bought into it. Hopefully we can get back on track against Plymouth on Saturday.

They made things very difficult for us. We’ve all been the underdog in these games before, and tonight was their night. Their goalkeeper made a couple of great saves, and on another night we might’ve got a result. Overall I thought they were well drilled - as Steve Evans’ sides usually are - so it’s one of those nights where we’ll take a few positives out of it, and we’ll use it as a learning curve and go again.

We’re going to need to be adaptable this season, we know that. I think that’s why the manager went with a strong team. The manager makes it clear that he takes every game seriously, and that we can learn and adapt from every game. We changed to a different shape halfway through, different lads came on in different positions, and we’re going to need all of these things in our armoury if we’re going to be successful in the league.

We’re all together, whether we win or lose, and it’s important we don’t get too high or low after different results. I think the squad has a nice balance to it, and we’ve got a nice discipline about us now. I think we’ve got all the ingredients we need to get to where we want to be. It’s going to be tough - like we’ve seen tonight - but I think one good thing is that we’ve had this experience early on and we can learn from it.