Preview: Ismaël Speaks Ahead Of Huddersfield Town Clash

Valérien Ismaël spoke to watfordfc.com ahead of the Hornets’ trip to Huddersfield Town on Saturday (November 4, 3pm KO), with Watford hoping to capitalise on three positive results last week.

Covering a range of topics, including team news ahead of the Sky Bet Championship fixture, and his thoughts on the Terriers, read what the Head Coach had to say below…

On his squad ahead of the match:

We had a good week last week and now it’s back to a normal schedule with the game being on Saturday. That has meant we had a good week of work with the players. Everyone is available for the game, so we have to pick the squad for the game tomorrow. The focus is on our performance and the mentality that we have put in the last few games – the desire, the passion and the belief in ourselves.

The game against Millwall shows the mentality within the squad and we want to keep pushing. We know that it’s another difficult away game, but with the momentum we have built, we want to keep pushing. We know exactly what we have to put into the game, and we want to keep that positive feeling around the club.

On the competition for places in the squad:

You see within the week the quality that we have got on the pitch. Midweek you play 11 v 11 and it's really high quality and high intensity. There is a lot of competition because we have all the players back, but they are also on the same level.

They are able to give that intensity in the training session and therefore we are able to simulate the numbers that we will see during the game on Saturday. For us, it’s a joy to see that and you can feel that the quality is raised during the week. That’s what we need to reproduce tomorrow.

On Huddersfield Town:

I like Darren Moore and I know him from his time at Sheffield Wednesday. We played against each other and he is a very good coach who did a very good job at Sheffield Wednesday. It’s never easy to play against him. It will be a tough game and fight, and we have to be ready. We expect similar to what we faced against Millwall, but we are ready.

The focus is on us and what we have to do. We know we need to put the right desire, mentality and focus on ourselves. We need to believe in our strengths because we know we can score at any time. We need to work together and suffer together if we need to. These are all the values we need tomorrow in order to have a successful game.

On using the Swansea City performance as a blueprint for another positive away result:

We want to keep pushing and we know we will have the support from our fans tomorrow, as usual. We need to keep pushing to keep that feeling that we had against Swansea in our minds. This is what we need to create.

On Rhys Healey:

This is what I said from the beginning – everyone is important. Everyone will get their chance and when they get their chance they need to make sure they help the team to succeed, and he helped the team succeed [against Millwall]. For sure, he stopped the goal going in with his [defensive] header. On the other hand, if you look at Mileta Rajović’s goal, Healey drags the defenders away from the ball which gives Rajović a free header. He helped us to get that point.