Vladimir Ivic will have a stronger squad at his disposal for this weekend's visit of Luton Town, after Watford were knocked out of the Carabao Cup last night by Newport County.

The head coach took a team mainly comprising of youngsters to South Wales, more out of necessity than choice, using only six of his permitted seven permitted substitute positions.

After the game, Ivic said it simply was not worth risking some of his senior players, including the likes of the recently returned Ismaila Sarr, who may still miss out on Saturday, with his squad still looking unbalanced.

The club currently are working on a number of deals, both incoming and outgoing, although the slow market, affected by Covid-19, has created something of a bottle neck, preventing them from doing business as quickly as they would like.

One player the club are hoping to bring in sooner rather than later is Nigerian defender William Troost-Ekong, with whom talks are continuing.

Speaking after the match, Ivic said: "We did one practise in the morning before our trip and I worked with the other guys who stayed there. We decided to keep them there to rest because we know that we have an important game on Saturday and we need to choose what we want.

"Tonight we played without nine or ten players who started the previous game in the Championship. I've said a lot of times, it's the beginning of the Championship, a lot of the players aren't ready yet to play every two or three days. We need to take care of them to not have problems with injuries and for me it was a game where I gave the chance to the guys from the academy."

This weekend will see Watford go head-to-head with Luton for the first time since 2006, with police stepping up their efforts to prevent any potential aggravation, despite the match being played behind closed doors.

Between now and then Ivic will be working on making sure his squad learns from the mistakes made last night, in his first defeat as Hornets head coach.

Asked if there were any positives to take from the match, the coach said there would be some small plus points, but that he was more interested in finding the negatives and improving on them.

"After the 3-1, when you lose a game, there's small things that can be positive," he said. "We have lost to a League Two team, for sure there's not a lot of positive things, but every game, you have some positives and some negatives. When you win it's the same, but today we have a lot of negative things to see and recognise and to improve."