Win confirms recent recovery

one. The supporters roared every tackle, header and clearance. The players found extra energy and Watford again failed to take their chances, Stefano Okaka lifting a shot over the bar in stoppage time after Andre Gray had been denied by a brilliant last-ditch tackle by Kenedy, who celebrated as though he had scored at the other end.

“We have had meetings with the staff and talked to players as individuals to see if we could change something or if something was wrong,” added Benitez. “We have so many things we thought were right, so it was just a case of carrying on. We just had to be lucky.”

That is something Watford manager Javi Gracia concurred with. His side had more shots on goal and more possession, but left defeated.

“If you don’t score, if you don’t kill the game when you have the chance to do it, you know afterwards something like today maybe can happen,” Gracia said.

“We dominated the first half – we played much better in the first half than in the second – but playing away against Newcastle, it’s difficult to create so many chances like today.

“It is difficult to understand and accept the result,” Gracia added. “Some things happen in football and you don’t know why.”

As he wrote and filed away his notes from the match on Saturday evening, Benitez will have smiled at that response from his fellow Spaniard. Richarlison showed opportunism, pace and skill in the execution of his second goal against Brighton. Intercepting Lewis Dunk’s ill-advised pass across the back four (1), the Brazilian flicked the ball to the left of Shane Duffy (2) and sprinted around the defender’s opposite side, a trick that meant Richarlison barely needed to break stride. The Everton forward then picked the ball up again with a clear run on goal ahead of him. With Mat Ryan moving out from the six-yard box, Richarlison held his nerve and rounded the goalkeeper before finishing coolly from a tight angle (3) to seal his team’s 3-1 victory.