Cathcart urges Watford to get running

Craig Cathcart wants his Watford teammates to work on their fitness so they can challenge the Premier League’s top sides.

New Hornets boss Walter Mazzarri would have been pleased with the way his side fared against Antonio Conte’s all-star Chelsea side for 70 minutes, but they squandered a one-goal lead for the second week running.

Nathan Redmond rescued a point for Southampton on the opening day and it was Diego Costa who grabbed the win for Chelsea at Vicarage Road.

(Photo by Matthew Ashton – AMA/Getty Images)

Northern Irishman Cathcart was frustrated with the way his side surrendered their lead, but believes if Watford put in the hard yards off-field then they are not far away from some better results.

“Fitness might come into it a little bit, but it’s still early in the season and we’re all finding our feet,” the 27-year-old said.

“The games come thick and fast so over the next few weeks I’m sure it won’t be a factor at all.

“We want to mix it with the best teams and we did today. It’s hard to look at the positives because we feel so deflated losing those two late goals.

“But we’ll look at the game in the next few days and look at the positives and pick ourselves up.

“I think we deserved at least a draw. I thought we were excellent in the first-half, and restricted them to very little.

“We got in behind a few times and in the second half we knew they would come at us and knew they had a lot of quality.”