Watford head coach Vladimir Ivic and chairman and CEO Scott Duxbury have both backed the club's philosophy of relying on younger players this season, even if it may be seen as a bit of a gamble.

Ivic acknowledged that it is a risky strategy, but he feels the quality of his younger players is enough for them to succeed this season, while Duxbury said it was a sign of the club reclaiming some of its DNA.

19-year-old Joao Pedro has twice scored the winning goal in league games so far this season, as he continues to show his potential, while several other youngsters have consistently featured in the Hornets' starting 11.

The head coach said it is important for these players to be given the opportunity to show what they can do.

"It's a big risk. If you don't gamble sometimes, you cannot win," Ivic told the Watford Observer. "You need sometimes to take this kind of risk, to use them and to give them the chance to play. If you don't give them a chance to play they cannot show you their quality. They can be their whole life quality young players, but we want from these young players to be a good player, to be in the first 11, how we have with some of them.

Watford Observer:

"Just to give some names, we have Jeremy Ngakia, who is a guy who played all the games until now and he did his job well. It's the first time he played in the Championship, we are very satisfied with him, but he's a guy who understands he needs to improve his game and day-by-day we will work with him. He's just one of them, we have Quina who is the same, we have James Garner who is a young player, but all of them are important for the team and all of them give their maximum and best every day to put their name in the lineup.

"It's a risk, I agree. Every game is important, every point is important and a small difference can create a victory or to lose the game, it means we need to give attention for a lot of things, how to improve."

Speaking at the At Our Place fans' forum last night, Ivic doubled down on this message and said that the club had two goals this season, to get promoted and to bring young players through into the first-team.

It was a message Duxbury endorsed, saying he felt the club had lost its way somewhat with their attempts to develop young talent.

"We sort of lost a bit of our DNA which is bringing younger players through, developing them, trusting them and with Vlad we're doing that again now," he said. "I think we lost a little bit of our way with that and it's really encouraging to see the younger players now coming through, playing and being part of the cause and I think that's one of the lessons that we learnt from the mistakes we made.

Watford Observer:

"The model was always to have a really good effective scouting network and bring young players in and develop them, both from a technical perspective and a commercial perspective, and sell at the right time.

"Over the past couple of years we maybe lost our way a bit and we weren't bringing in the young players and we certainly weren't developing them, or we had the young players and we were blocking their pathway. I think we're going back to our core DNA which can only be beneficial for us."