Vital stats:
Match: Watford (9th) v City (3rd)
Competition: Premier League
Date and time: Saturday 2 January 2016, 5.30pm (GMT)
Referee: Martin Atkinson
Last time: Watford 1 City 1 (Saturday, 21 April 2007)
Head to head record:
Watford wins 6, Draws 5, City wins 9
Form: Watford: LDWWWW City: DWLWLW
Tickets: Sold Out
Key Quotes
Manuel Pellegrini: “Maybe at the beginning of the season it can be a surprise, the same as Leicester, but when you play 19 games or so and we are still talking about Watford and Leicester, it is because they have important players in a good moment in who are giving a high performance with their managers doing a very good job.”
Pablo Zabaleta: “They have some really hard-working players as well with Deeney and Ighalo are playing really well - they have scored a lot of Watford’s goals this season and we’re expecting nothing less than a really tough match.
“I’ve never played at Vicarage Road before but from what I’ve seen on TV it’s a really tight ground with the crowd right on top of you so we have to be prepared for everything.”
Quique Sanchez Flores: “The first time we played against Manchester City they were amazing, they hadn’t conceded any goals, they were really positive. They have continued being an amazing team, but we have changed a little bit our mentality. We are established in the competition, we have the respect of the opponents, so now I think it is a little bit different.”
Valon Behrami: “It’s going to be a difficult game, like we’ve had in the last week against Chelsea and Tottenham. We know that at home we have the quality to get a good result, and if we keep working like this we can be more lucky than we were in our last game [against Spurs].”
Team News
Watford: Ake (suspended), Ekstrand.
City: Nasri, Kompany.
Further Reading
Manuel Pellegrini text preview
Manuel Pellegrini video preview
Pablo Zabaleta preview
Head to Head: Aguero v Ighalo
