Manchester City came from a goal down to record what could be a vital victory in their quest to regain the Premier League title.
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Manchester City have struggled on the road this season and have not won away in the league since a 1-0 victory at Crystal Palace in September.
With the win, City sit third on the log, one point behind second-placed Leicester, while leaders Arsenal increased their lead at the top with their 1-0 win over Newcastle at the Emirates.
City manager Manuel Pellegrini spoke afterwards with the relief of a man whose team had just been sprung out of jail.
Hornets boss Quique Sanchez Flores has no new injury worries, but he remains without defenders Tommie Hoban and Joel Ekstrand because of respective groin and knee injuries. I thought so in the first leg (half of the season). I think that he is a very professional player.
He still rates Aguero as the best player he has ever managed, along with David Silva, whom he coached at Valencia.
“We have to try to improve and take a little bit more care with the details”.
“It was enough to have some doubts, maybe”. Aguero is a completely different player.
Watford have been one of the surprise packages of the season, and they once again produced an energetic display, with forwards Troy Deeney and Odion Ighalo a constant threat. “We have a lot of reasons to be happy but today we are sad because we want more”. It’s not normal not to win for six games but we were playing well. In every important game, we are a team with a lot of character.
Speaking to Sky Sports after the game, Flores described the result as “very hard to accept”.
In just two minutes and 36 seconds, City turned the game around when Aguero – starved of chances in the match and having failed to score in his last five appearances – applied the coupe de grace with an clinical finish. The concern is that they have scored only two goals in their last six away games in the league during their winless run.
Pellegrini said: “I think we know Kun needs three or four games to return to his top level after injury, so for him the goal was very important and hopefully he can go on from here. That’s the type of game, when you win it in that situation, from 1-0 down with 10 minutes to go, it’s going to boost their confidence big time”, he said.
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Nyom was rightly booked for an terrible dive in the City box but there was more to admire about Watford’s attacking play early in the second half, as Hart plunged low to his right to tip a Ben Watson drive around the post.
