Watford manager Slaven Bilic has lamented his club’s injury woes after three players suffered hamstring injuries during Monday’s 1-0 victory over Norwich City.
On a day when Watford were already missing 10 first-team players due to injuries, Vakoun Bayo’s goal in the 86th minute gave Bilic’s side a valuable win that lifted them to fourth in the Championship table.
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The victory was all the more impressive after Samuel Kalu, Keinan Davis and Christian Kabasele were all forced off with hamstring ailments.
Bilic praised his team’s ability to overcome the adversity, saying: “Great result, considering all the difficulties. Great performance from the team. Sometimes you ask from your team to give more than the maximum, this was like that.
“We demanded, you are fighting, OK, you are giving yourself, but it’s not enough in this situation. You have to give more somehow.
“We showed today, even when the situations are like impossible, still it’s possible.”
Asked whether he’d ever been faced with an injury problem like this, Bilic added: “Never. OK the (previous) game was three, four days ago against Swansea. But it’s hard to explain. It looked like kind of a movie or Candid Camera. It is strange, very unique unfortunately in a negative way.
“I’ve never faced something, nowhere near something like that in my career as a player or as a manager.
“Davis, for example, he has to run 50 yards, 60 yards with a man on his back, which with his weight is not ideal, you are more likely to get injured, which is actually what happened. When it comes down to that, we are big time unlucky to be fair, big time unlucky.
“Kabasele had to cover like sometimes 60 yards that you don’t normally do as a centre-back.”
Bilic added that while it will be difficult for Watford to rotate their squad against Reading in the FA Cup this coming Saturday, he’s hoping some players will return by their next league game against Blackpool on January 14.
“Now FA Cup, normally you are planning to play with your next team or second team and now we don’t have a second team, we have a team.
“This situation has to improve, some of the players will be back hopefully very, very soon, for the next league game.
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“I’m not expecting when we play against Blackpool that we’re going to be in a situation worse than today or even like today, considering that you have to improvise putting a right-back in midfield, putting a kid there or a kid there. I think we should be better than that but it’s a big blow. We don’t have a striker now, Davis, f*** it, that’s bad.”
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(Photo: Getty Images)