MATT Spring was left with mixed emotions after losing his first match back at Vicarage Road.

The midfielder helped Watford into the Premier League earlier in his career but until yesterday hadn’t been back to the club he used to call home since departing in 2007.

He was given a generous round of applause from the Watford fans prior to kick off and after the match was left with feelings of disappointment and optimism for the season ahead.

The 32-year-old felt Wanderers did more than enough to take yesterday’s Capital One Cup tie all the way to penalties after a sterling team effort.

And Spring thinks Blues can take that on into the League Two season when it kicks off at York City next weekend.

He said: “We’re disappointed, which in a way is a good feeling because you know you can take positives out of the game. It’s always good when you’re disappointed coming to a Championship team and losing. We felt we could have gone on and got something from the game.

“Penalties would have been a fair result, the way the game went. Neither team looked like scoring.

“The team played really well as a team, which we’ve been trying to work on. Defensively we looked strong and we showed a bit of energy.

“We applied ourselves well. The performance was a lot better than what we’ve shown over pre-season.

“I don’t think we really troubled their goalie too much but I think we could have gone 1-0 up in the first five or ten minutes with [Richard] Logan’s shot.”