Sierralta: “The Important Thing Was Winning”

An early opener would have been just what the Hornets desired at Rotherham United, and Francisco Sierralta delivered this in the ninth minute with his debut goal for the club.

Sierralta is the first Chilean to play for Watford and at the New York Stadium he became the first from his nation to score for the Yellows, when he headed in from Philip Zinckernagel’s cross.

“I enjoyed my first goal a lot,” said the centre-half. “Last game I scored an own goal, and now I’ve scored a goal to balance this! It’s my first goal since I played for Empoli, about a year-and-a-half ago now. The important thing was winning, and we did that. It’s important to keep playing well, as we have been doing lately, and we have nine finals to go.”

Ismaïla Sarr, Ken Sema and Dan Gosling also scored to make it four goals for Watford. At the other end Daniel Bachmann did his best to keep a clean sheet, even saving a penalty from Michael Smith, but he could not keep out an outrageous Freddie Ladapo strike.

“It’s not a big problem,” said Sierralta, after the team failed to add to their already impressive tally of 17 clean sheets for the season. “We work a lot to win the games and if we can do it without conceding a goal then good, but if not, it’s not a problem. Also, their goal came in a very fine way.”

Watford’s victory also came on an evening when Swansea City and Brentford dropped points, strengthening the Golden Boys’ position in second place, but Sierralta is not looking at the table just yet.

“We’re doing very well, and we want to keep doing well,” said the 23-year-old. “We’re not obsessively thinking about going up. We all have that goal, but we think about it game by game, rather than being obsessed with this.”