The long-awaited relegation showdown after the winter break was one of the uneventful football scores of the weekend in the Premier League. The match took place after being postponed twice due to Covid. It was also the first time that Roy Hodgson took charge of Watford. He had an instant impact with Watford securing their first clean sheet in the last 30 Premier League games.
Player ratings
Burnley: Pope (6), Roberts (7), Tarkowski (8), Mee (6), Pieters (7), Lennon (7), Westwood (7), Stephens (7), McNeil (6), Cornet (7), Weghorst (7).
Subs used: Rodriguez (7).
Watford: Foster (7), Femenia (6), Cathcart (7), Samir (6), Kamara (7), Kucka (7), Kayembe (6), Sissoko (7), Sema (6), King (7), Joao Pedro (7).
Subs used: Cleverley (7), Hernandez (7).
Man of the match: James Tarkowski.
Managers Reaction:
Burnley manager Sean Dyche: “Probably in my time up here, that’s as harsh conditions as I’ve seen. I thought both sides tried to handle it. We started very well, took the game on and there was a really good atmosphere in the stadium. In the last 20 minutes, we just lost our way a little bit. We re-took our grip in the second half. We’ve got to change the rhetoric really because it’s a similar scenario – we looked solid, played at times, affected the game at times, created chances, and didn’t finish that off.
Watford manager Roy Hodgson: “I’m more than satisfied with the performance. I thought they worked really hard. This is a notoriously difficult venue – the wind and the rain didn’t help either – and we have a lot of players who have just joined the club from foreign teams. It was a bit of a baptism of fire for them, but I thought they stood up to it very well.”
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