How Watford have played this season ahead of their match against Sunderland
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00:00 Watford lost 3-2 against Middlesbrough last time out at home.
00:04 They beat QPR 4-0 on the opening day of the season, but since then they've won just one
00:09 of their next eight league games.
00:11 Valerian Ismail was appointed in the summer, I was reading just before.
00:15 He was their 19th manager in 11 years at Watford, formerly at Barnsley and West Brom.
00:21 So how would you say they've been playing under him at Barnsley and West Brom?
00:24 He had a reputation, didn't he, of being a very direct manager.
00:28 So what's it been like at Watford under him?
00:31 It's been wholesale change.
00:32 I think we had over 20 players leave during the summer, either sold, released, went back
00:39 to their clubs after loans.
00:40 Ismail's come in, we've got a very, very thin squad of his choice.
00:44 I mean, we're looking at sometimes less than two players in each position and a completely
00:49 different style of play to anything anybody expected.
00:52 I mean, there's no hoofball, there's no long direct.
00:55 It's very much playing out from the back.
00:58 You'll see our goalkeeper will play 15, 20 yards outside his penalty area.
01:02 It almost act like a sweeper.
01:05 It will be possession football.
01:06 The only change came against Middlesbrough on Saturday.
01:09 We suddenly went from 4-3-3 to 3-5-2, which the manager said himself was pretty much an
01:16 unmitigated disaster.
01:17 We were two down in 20 minutes.
01:20 And it did look like we never played that formation before.