Watford manager Quique Sanchez Flores gave his thoughts ahead of Saturday’s match as Swansea City travel to Vicarage Road hoping to continue their unbeaten start to the season.
The Hornets may still be looking for their first win of the campaign after four games, but they’ve still only lost once – against current leaders Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium.
Vicarage Road is yet to see a Premier League goal so far, with 0-0 draws involving Southampton and West Brom respectively.
Flores told the press that they don’t have a strategy to particularly target Swansea’s top goalscorer Bafetimbi Gomis, which the manager descrived as being “a big mistake”, saying they think of the opposition as a collective.
He also said how they need to start improving their attacking play in the final third, to create more chances – as they don’t seem to have too many problems at the back after a 100% clean sheet record at home in 2 games.
‘Our plans are collective,’
‘It is to move Gomis into the place where we can reduce his ability. We never prepare one strategy for (Lionel) Messi, one strategy for Gomis, one for (Wayne) Rooney as that is a big mistake.
‘In this case for us it is important to choose when we want to defend and attack – Gomis is part of the plan of course, but he is always involved in the main plan.
‘They are a really good team. They are confident and have been working really well the last few years.
‘They are a very clever team, they manage the transitions very well and have good individuals in Gomis, Ayew, (Jefferson) Montero, (Jonjo) Shelvey – they have a lot of good players. But we think of the team as a collective – no different to other matches.’
‘We scored against Everton and afterwards we had chances but we had to work in the mind of the players and convince them they are working in the right way,’
‘We don’t have problems when we have the ball, the main problem is when we are in the last third. The attacks are coming when you’re defending well – when we were preparing in pre-season we were thinking of working like a unit, a strong team who make it uncomfortable for the other team.
‘It is clear that we have problems with the attempts. We are shooting less in the last few matches. We are working hard trying to solve this.
‘I try to remove pressure for the players – the players need to do the best during the matches so I try to remove that during the week.
‘I’m trying to make confidence to go onto the pitch and win and to show the fans that we have the possibility to win every single match we play.”
Watford will need to improve their ability in the final third if they have “problems” like Flores says they do. The Swans have conceded – on average – a goal per game – which is not bad considering two of the four games they’ve played have been against Chelsea and Manchester United.
Ayew and Gomis have been on top form too – scoring 7 goals between them already, with the latter scoring in every game so far. Ayew probably should have done the same but only managed to see a header brilliantly saved at Sunderland.
Shelvey, Williams and Taylor all returned unscathed following international duty while winger Jefferson Montero is back in training and could possibly be fit enough to start – after missing the win against Manchester United due to a hamstring injury.
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