Valérien Ismaël spoke to the media ahead of Watford’s clash against West Bromwich Albion on Wednesday evening (September 20, 7.45pm KO), with the Hornets looking to maintain their momentum following a memorable 2-0 victory over Birmingham City last time out.
Covering a range of topics, including team news, the Watford faithful and his thoughts on the Baggies, read what the Head Coach had to say below…
On team news ahead of the match:
Ken Sema will be out, unfortunately. We thought that the injury was slight, but we did a scan which showed it was bad. He will miss a couple of weeks. We will see how long it will take to get him back. Otherwise, Vakoun Bayo will be back for the game which gives us more options. With Jamal Lewis, he was sore after the Birmingham game, but it’s my job to manage him so that we can count on him. Not all the players are on the same fitness level and now it’s my job, with the staff, to find the right balance. My concern is to keep availability high for all players.
On West Brom and facing his former club:
I’m not emotional and I don’t want to be emotional. It’s just the next Championship game and after that, we have the next one. It’s all about the focus being on Watford and what we have to do. We need to prepare the players to win the game and it’s a home game. We want to win regardless of the opponent we face – this is my mindset. I think there are still a lot of players at West Brom who I used to work with and it was a good time. We did some very good work and when I left I had a lot of messages from the players, but now it’s another chapter and I’m just looking forward to the next game.
After beating QPR we saw that we had some difficulty winning a game again for some time. It’s a process now. The next step in the process has put us in the same situation where we won the first game after a break, just like QPR. Now it’s about taking the next step and winning the second game. This is our purpose in our mind. For sure, the win against Birmingham gives us that confidence and with our next game being in front of our supporters, we have the desire to confirm our performance with three points.
On the impact of the home crowd:
I think we saw that they had a big impact on the game on Saturday. The patience that they showed [was important]. I have seen many places where it has been 0-0 and you are running out of time, and the fans might be impatient, but that was not the case. Everyone understood what we were doing on the pitch. The opponent made it difficult, and I was pleased that everyone got the reward for their patience – the supporters and the players.
On his playing philosophy:
You try to create big distances between the ball and our goal. You want to make sure you have time to stop any attack. The thing is that most of the goals we have conceded have, most of the time, been our mistakes. More than that, as I said to the players, it’s all about the desire and being convinced. We know that we are able to compete. We have implemented our philosophy, we see it on the pitch at the minute, but now it is about getting the points to cement our confidence and the methods that we have implemented. We want to build that momentum. We want to implement that winning mentality. Don’t be satisfied with one win. We want the next one.
The opponent can play how they want. They can do anything they want on the pitch. We have to find a solution. We have to create chances. It doesn’t matter if the opponent wants to press high, we have to adapt, if the opponent wants to defend deep, we have to find the solution. We have got the solution, and we know now that we are able to score at any time, from the first minute until the very last minute. It gives us that confidence. We need to stay patient, be ruthless and very clinical to avoid mistakes. We are prepared and we know what we have to do.
Generally, in football, people like to put you in a box. Sometimes people don’t try to understand why you play a certain way. It depends on the profile of the player that you have, the different shapes that you can play with the squad, the quality of the players and the belief of the squad. It’s clear that when you come to a Besiktas or Watford, you can tell players are comfortable with the ball and they want to play that way.
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