Mark Venus will face a fitness test on his injured knee on Friday and is Joe Royle's biggest concern ahead of the visit of Watford. The central defender picked up a knock during the Rotherham game and missed out at Brighton on Wednesday.

Chris Makin (hamstring) is still out despite being expected back this weekend while John McGreal (damaged medial ligament) and Finidi George (ankle) are also missing.

Returning to the squad are Marcus Bent and Martijn Reuser with the former definitely on the bench.

Manager Royle says that Reuser is taking a little while to get to full fitness after his knee operation: “He'll be in the squad, but he won't be starting. He's had two-and-a-half games in the reserves but they all have different fitness levels and it's taking just a little bit longer with Martijn, but he's done OK.”

A piece of good news is that Tommy Miller is over his tendinitis problem and trained on Thursday. Miller was due to start against Rotherham last week until the recurrence of his injury. With Matt Holland looking likely to move into the back three Miller could well start in the midfield.

Despite the number of injured central defenders Royle still feels that a 3-5-2 formation is ideal given Town's personnel: “I still think it suits us when everyone is available, with the players that we've got. There's no wingers on our books, no wide players, a Mark Kennedy, a Kanchelskis or a Rick Holden.”

The search for a loan striker continues and Royle revealed that he has widened that hunt to the continent: “It's got to be somebody out of somebody's first team and different to what we've already got so it's hard. We're looking abroad as well.”

When Town last met Watford they were impressive in a 2-0 win at Vicarage Road a month ago. Since then results have not gone so well: “It was looking better, but we never got carried away.

“Since then we've had a couple of hiccups. We pulled a point out of the fire the other night when we hadn't played as well as we had in losing the two previous games.

"I'll settle for the performance last week against Rotherham as long as we start putting one or two of our chances away.”

The Town manager was pleased with Richard Naylor's contribution as a sub at Brighton: “We certainly better in that game when we had to go a bit longer at times. It was wind-assisted and Richard did OK.

“It seems strange that we've been looking at him as a centre-half and all of a sudden he's playing up front. He gave us a physical presence in the box we hadn't had and he's in the squad and in the reckoning.”

“We've just got to marry the two things; the quality of performance with the finishing touch.

“I was pleased that we came back at Brighton the other night. We were useless in the first half, not in terms of keeping the ball just in looking dangerous. You've got to score to win a game and we didn't seem to want to score goals. But second half we did make their goalkeeper work and that was promising.”

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