Nottingham Forest manager Steve Cotterill was sad his side couldn’t produce a win for Nigel Doughty in their first match since the chairman’s death.
Garath McCleary scored Forest’s first goal at home in 649 minutes but Troy Deeney’s strike a minute before the break meant they had to be content with a 1-1 draw against Watford and an npower Championship point.
But following six successive league defeats at the City Ground, Forest at least stopped the rot with a much-improved performance a week after Doughty was found dead at his home in Lincolnshire.
Cotterill said: “We scored a goal for Nigel but we would like to have kept a clean sheet and won the game for him.
“It’s been a tough week but I like to think I am an honest manager and I thought we had enough opportunities to have won two games today.
“We played really well, created an abundance of chances, didn’t take them and are left feeling slightly disappointed.
“But we’ve got 17 matches left and if we give the same kind of performance at Middlesbrough on Tuesday night I will be very pleased.
“Having said that we have not been as bad as our results indicate. A lot of the games we have lost have been similar to today’s but we can take some positives from this.”
Cotterill, whose side remained in the relegation zone, added: “We’ve picked up a point, gone up a place in the table and now we’ve got to start scratching away at the people above us.”
Forest might have been expected to prosper from McCleary’s second goal of the season – a sweet 25-yard strike that flew past Watford keeper Scott Loach.
But Watford, despite being under pressure for most of the first half, equalised just before the break when Sean Murray’s free-kick was flicked into the roof of the net by Deeney.
Although Watford had chances in the second half – skipper John Eustace clipped the bar from Deeney’s cross – Forest had the bulk of the attacking play but wasted their opportunities.
Chris Gunter was the main culprit. He was presented with four second-half chances but the nearest he came to a winner was in the 58th minute when he fired against the bar from Marlon Harewood’s cross.
Watford boss Sean Dyche admitted: “We are happy with a point. It would have been tough for any side coming to Forest today with the emotion and also new players in the side.
“We have to accept that Forest had better chances overall but, although we weren’t quite there today, we did very well to respond to going behind with what was a resilient performance.
“We played quite well in patches and even had a couple of chances to nick it in the second half but had we taken one of them we would have been nicking the result.
“But the players have been magnificent this season and acquitted themselves very well in the circumstances. They’ve shown a lot of honest endeavour and we’ve got some good players.”
