Aidy Boothroyd hailed goalkeeper Richard Lee after he saved two first-half penalties at Southampton.
Two saved spot-kicks help Watford to first away win
Watford manager Aidy Boothroyd hailed goalkeeper Richard Lee as he saved two first-half penalties at Southampton.
Lee denied both David McGoldrick and Paul Wotton from the spot in a hectic first 18 minutes, and the home side's wretched defending then allowed the visitors to claim a 3-0 victory - their first on the road this season.
Boothroyd said: "Richard Lee won us the points today. He was lucky to stay on the pitch because some may feel he should have been sent off for his challenge but he picked himself up and produced two fantastic saves.
"It was a poor start and we needed to find a cause.
"I think I'm going to have to tell the players we're 1-0 down before the start of each game.
"But set-pieces change games and we do a lot of work on them on the training grounds and thankfully they came off today."
Boothroyd added: "In terms of promotion there are teams that are far more equipped than ours that are going for promotion and we just want to have more games like today and not even talk about promotion or relegation."
Frustrated Southampton manager Jan Poortvliet said: "I'm very disappointed. There were a lot of mistakes and when you go through a game with no concentration and no professionalism, it is not nice to see.
"You should really be scoring penalties but I do not want to use that as an excuse and the players know they should have done better all around.
"It is all about confidence and we have to pick ourselves up, learn from this and go on to the next game."
