Valérien Ismaël spoke to watfordfc.com after Watford's 1-0 win away to Rotherham United in the Sky Bet Championship.
Read what the Head Coach had to say below...
On the win:
It is a massive relief for everyone. I am very pleased, first for our fans it was a massive effort for them again today, I think 1500 came this afternoon, so this is a win for them. It was a big fight, this is what we expected.
We said before the game, whatever it takes today it is all about coming back to the winning ways, we knew that. We have got a clean sheet as well, a good fighting performance from the players, team-first mentality, this is what we saw today with a great goal from Yáser Asprilla.
On the clean sheet:
If you see the statistic, we protect our goal well because we knew it would be more direct, the ball will come into our box from everywhere on the pitch, so we were more solid on the line-up, but this is what we wanted, to make sure we can defend every situation.
On Yáser Asprilla:
We are pleased with him, especially in the first half he has one situation where he made, in the box, he made the square ball to Mileta [Rajović], we told him at half-time you have to shoot on target now he has confidence, and stop playing square, square, square, now we need to make sure we have the desire to score, and it was a magnificent goal again.
On the impact of the subsitutes:
We came out from a difficult period, losing a lot of tough games, and we recognised that our bench didn’t have the impact we expected the last few weeks. We spoke before the game, everyone needs to be on top, everyone needs to understand that we need everyone, especially when the schedule is tough.
When you have got your team-mates 60, 70, 80 minutes working hard for the result, and we need the fresh legs to come in and to help, and I think the message came across much better, great feeling, it is a great togetherness win today.
On a clear week ahead of Huddersfield:
First of all for the players it will be good now to breathe a little bit, especially on the mental side, but we are focused on the week, we are looking forward to the week to work with the players, to work more on the details, and our focus is to take the next challenge.
If you see our home record, we didn’t win a lot of games the last weeks, we need to change that now, that is the next challenge, we have a full week to prepare ourselves properly and to have the support from our fans, and together the purpose will be to finally win a home game.
On the fans:
When I came out I just watched the fans and I said: “all of the stand is yellow and black." That is incredible, the support, when you get the reward like that, when you win the game and you see they make a massive effort to come, they made a lot of sacrifice to support us so we are much more pleased to give them the three points and today for our fans.
