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2021/22 English Premier League
Matchday 34
Manchester City v Watford
Etihad Stadium
Manchester, England
Saturday, 23 April 2022
Kick-off is at 16h00
Manchester City will be hoping to maintain their impressive record against Watford in the Premier League on Saturday, April 23 at the Etihad Stadium.
The Citizens have yet to lose to the Hornets in the
Premier League era and boast a record of 11 wins from their previous 13 meetings.
Pep Guardiola's side maintained their one-point lead over Liverpool at the league summit after the two title rivals drew 2-2 at Eastlands on April 10.
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Guardiola rested a number of his first-team players in the 3-2 FA Cup semi-final defeat to the Reds over the Easter weekend and the Spaniard is hopeful his decision will pay off in the long run.
"When you have all the squad, it's easier to handle (the fixture congestion)," he said. "But without Ruben [Dias] for example, Aymer [Aymeric Laporte] played all of the minutes and was so tired in the last game in Madrid because he's a human being.
"We need our people to come back to face the situation. But the players in the second half against Liverpool, you could say they were sad or tired - but how did they react? This is our team for a long time, it doesn't matter, we fight and we do it.
"When I make a selection, I'm always thinking about the players I don't allow to play, so when I have the chance to do it I want to do it."
Watford's quest to stay up seems doomed after a 2-1 loss to Brentford at Vicarage Road was their third defeat on the spin and a seventh in 10 matches.
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Roy Hodgson's team are six points adrift of safety in 19th place with just six games remaining in the season and the manager conceded they were made to pay for a poor first-half performance against the Bees.
"Unfortunately you prepare the game and dream of the performance and visualise the performance but it's not what you get," Hodgson said.
"We needed every player from the first minute to be at the top of their game and that was by no means the case, but we did remedy in the second half some aspects of our performance and gave ourselves a chance.
"We equalised and could even have got that winner. It would have been nice to have done it from the first minute because then maybe we wouldn't have been behind at half-time.
"I thought in the second half we did more than well enough, we got ourselves back in and looked like we were going to be good value for a 1-1, so to lose it to a free-kick in the 95th minute was a harsh judgement on the team."
Head-to-Head (Last Five Premier League Meetings)
Matches - 5
Man City - 5
Watford - 0
Draws - 0
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