Walter Mazzarri wants Watford to maintain their 'anger' against Stoke City
Saturday 26 November 2016 13:12, UK
Walter Mazzarri wants his Watford players to maintain their “anger” as they look to follow up their win over Leicester with victory against Stoke City.
The Hornets were thrashed 6-1 by Liverpool before the international break, with the Italian coach declaring that he wanted his squad to be "as angry as him" to redeem themselves against the Premier League champions.
And they delivered with a 2-1 victory to sit eighth in the Premier League heading into this weekend's matches, just a point behind Manchester United.
Mazzarri now wants the same intensity as the Leicester game when they welcome Mark Hughes' side to Vicarage Road for Sunday's noon kick-off, which is live on Sky Sports.
"This has been the subject of the whole week at the training ground," he said when asked if he wants the anger to remain.
"Now we have to continue getting the positive results, and this is what an important team has to make the next big step.
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"We have to go onto the pitch angry as when we went against Leicester, and always thinking that we lost the previous game, so we have to come back as angry as we were then.
"The important thing is to go altogether with great team spirit and continue to fight."
Watford changed their shape for the game with the Foxes, reverting to playing one striker with Odion Ighalo dropped to the bench.
Etienne Capoue and Roberto Pereyra scored the goals while skipper Troy Deeney continues the wait for his 100th goal for the club.
But Mazzarri refused to be drawn on whether he would stick to the new formation going forward.
"To say that we play with one or two strikers, it is very difficult to confirm," the former Inter Milan boss added.
"Even if we take into consideration Nordin Amrabat, he came here as a forward and has been playing as a winger.
"We could have said we were playing with three strikers and now it is with two. What counts at the end of the day is with what mechanisms the team move around the pitch with and how well we play.
"When we played with one striker you could see all the different occasions we had to score against Leicester, one striker, three strikers, it is not important."
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