Will Hughes is preparing for another difficult week in the Championship with Watford, as they look to build on their three-win streak first away at Blackburn Rovers on Wednesday, then at Bournemouth on Saturday.

Following their third game in the space of a week on Friday night against Derby County, the midfielder admitted that physically the squad has been exhausted at moments during the gruelling schedule but said the players' readiness to keep performing is testament to their strong character.

Head coach Xisco Munoz has made just one change to his line up following each of their last two wins, as he tries to build some consistency in his team, and his side have risen to the challenge winning all of their last three matches and heaping more pressure on the sides at the top of the Championship.

With Munoz not letting the players ease off ahead of another challenging week, the players know they will have to dig deep once again.

"The games come thick and fast, you never have a chance to settle," said Hughes. "It's always on to the next one and I think we've just got to focus on ourselves now, we can't look ahead too much ahead because although we've moved to third, other teams have games in hand, there's three extremely good teams around us, so it's the old cliche of we've got to focus on ourselves.

Harrow Times:

"We want to play football and I don't think many people see the other side of it where we're playing with niggles or we're mentally tired after so many games in such a short period of time, but it says a lot about the character of the players that we want to play and everyone for a man stands up to it."

With Swansea City, Bournemouth, Brentford and Reading all losing at the weekend, Watford's chances of closing the gap with the top two has increased slightly, but there's still a lot of hard work for them to do, starting with the recovery.

"We've had three [matches] in six days, so we have to recover right, regardless of when we're playing next," he said. "And I think we've shown we've done that with more or less the same team over the last three games

“We’re pushing on for those top two spots. We know it’s going to be difficult and we’re going to have to get results like we did tonight.

“There are some very good teams above us and that’s how it is at the moment, so it’s going to be difficult chasing them down, but we have to do our job."