Watford boss Quique Sanchez Flores doesn't want his players 'relaxing' during time off

No time to relax: Watford players celebrate after Ighalo's early strike
(Ian MacNicol/Getty images)
Damian Spellman13 December 2015

Watford boss Quique Sanchez Flores was warned his players they cannot afford to relax if they are to maintain their fine start to life back in the Barclays Premier League.

The Hornets climbed to seventh place in the table as a result of their seventh victory of the campaign, a 1-0 win at struggling Sunderland on Saturday afternoon.

However, Flores insists the initial target of securing the club's top-flight status remains their only focus, and that means adding to their current tally of 25 points as quickly as possible.

He said: "That's the most important thing. We don't want to hear about 'relax'. I like the players to enjoy their day off and everything, but for us the most important thing is after two days to focus again, work hard every week and prepare for the next opponent.

"We are really pleased with performance of the players. We are completely focused on the target and the level of confidence is very high. They are always thinking about how we can improve.

"My expectation before every single match is very high, but always the players come and to improve always."

Victory was secured within four minutes of kick-off at the Stadium of Light as the visitors took advantage of a dreadful start by their hosts.

Striker Odion Ighalo and defender Sebastian Coates both appeared to get a touch to Allan Nyom's cross with Sunderland boss Sam Allardyce at least attributing the goal to his man.

The Black Cats launched a fightback after an early reshuffle with substitute Jermain Defoe seeing one effort ruled out for offside, another saved by keeper Heurelho Gomes and a third drop agonisingly wide, although Ighalo went through on goal three times in the final few minutes, but failed to find a finish on each occasion.

Flores said: "Our start in the first 25 minutes was really, really good, good possession and good attempts and after that, we lost different balls, we started playing in the middle passing just through the centre to the strikers.

"We opened the possibilities up to Sunderland and after that, it was difficult to get the result until the last moment."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in