Steve Evans said Watford give them huge respect by making just one change - but he felt Stevenage should have won in normal time. 

The Carabao Cup match at the Lamex Stadium ended with Boro winning 4-3 on penalties after a 1-1 draw in normal time.

The Hornets had beaten QPR 4-0 in their opening Championship game on Saturday and arrived at the Lamex with 10 of the starting line-up that day beginning again.  

And after going a goal down in six minutes, it took a tactical switch nine minutes later to get Boro on the front foot.

Evans said: "They've paid us a huge compliment, haven’t they? They've come here and only changed the goalkeeper from a team that tore Queens Park Rangers apart really. 

"And having watched it twice, the score then could have been double. 

"So when you look at their team, you know they're going to be on the front foot, full of confidence and we struggled to deal with it. 

"After 15 minutes we changed our shape and the momentum of the game changed. 

"And I think then over the rest of the first half and certainly in the second half, we should probably win it in normal play. 

"I know our goalkeeper has made a couple of saves very late, but we got into some good areas. 

"And then it was penalties. You win them and you lose them but we're just happy that we've been able to make some changes, rest one or two, and beat a full-strength Watford, which is fantastic."

The saves Evans refered too came from on-loan West Ham keeper Krisztian Hegyi, making his Stevenage debut.

The pick of them somehow saw he deflect a Vakoun Bayo effort from six yards over the top.

And the Scot predicts a fine future for the 20-year-old Hungarian.

"We're fortunate," said Evans. "We had to work really hard to get Krisztian as I thought he would have been going higher up the pyramid or overseas. 

"I’ve seen him make those saves when I watched him at West Ham. 

"He just has to continue to keep his head down, keep working hard on the training ground and a West Ham future will be his for sure. 

"His battle here is to is to get the number one shirt but that's tough because Taye [Ashby-Hammond] was very good on Saturday."

While Watford made one change, Boro made six from the team that won at Northampton Town in League One, and named just five substitutes from a possible nine.

One of those missing altogether was skipper Carl Piergianni and the Boro boss explained why he took that decision.

He said: "I could have named nine and could have brought kids up as they’ve been with us all pre-season. 

 

 

"But we're not going to put them onto the field and play. Some of them will be really good players for this club but are they ready to go onto the pitch with the Watford boys? No, they're not ready for that. 

"I don't want to put them in an atmosphere or put them in a situation where it sends their development in the opposite direction from where we’ve taken it. 

"And then obviously we’ve had to make some decisions about players, whether we included them in the squad. 

"For example, the captain. We left him out as he just felt a little tightness in training yesterday. 

"Last season we had a wonderful season, a wonderful cup run and everything, but every time we seemed to take the field, we made four or five changes. 

"There's no first team, there is no stars, there is no automatic starters. It's 20, 21 lads, and hopefully 23 lads, competing to be in the team."