Lee keeping the promotion faith

Ahead of the home leg of their playoff semi-final against Hull City on Sunday, Lee has called on team-mates and supporters to forget the disappointment of missing out on automatic promotion.

He said: "Instead of looking on the bleak side, which I'm sure a lot of people are still doing, we've got to say 'okay, we aimed for automatic promotion and we didn't get that so now we'll win the play-offs'. We have to look at the positives. We managed to dig out a result at Blackpool last weekend which got us into the play-offs, and now we're there we've as good a chance as anyone. We just need to find our form again."

Having started the season by racing to the top of the Championship, Watford ended the campaign with just one win from 14 games.

Lee admitted: "We're not firing on all cylinders right now which probably makes us underdogs going into the games against Hull. But we might have won seven or eight of those 14 games if we'd put away a chance here and there so I don't think we're a million miles away."

What will concern Watford fans is their team's desperate home form. Just eight wins at Vicarage Road this term is easily the worst record of clubs in the top half of the table.

Lee said: "We've been very good on the road this season but we need to go to Hull next Wednesday on the back of a good result at home.

"If we had been half decent at home there's a good chance we'd have ended up in the top two in the table. So it will be a big game for us on Sunday."