Watford travel to Old Trafford in search of crucial win

Watford will look to beat Manchester United again this season, as the last time they faced each other, Watford were 2-0 victors at Vicarage Road.

Manchester United played Chelsea on Monday night with the Red Devils able to get the job done against the Blues. Goals from Anthony Martial and Harry Maguire secured the three poins were coming back to Manchester. In the Europa League Round of 32 they played Club Brugge with the Manchester club getting a crucial away goal. Anthony Martial cancelled out Emmanuel Bonaventure’s opener to leave the tie in the balance.

Watford were masters of their own downfall against Brighton & Hove Albion. Abdoulaye Doucoure opened the scoring for the Hornets with Adrian Mariappa scoring an own goal to gift Brighton a point.

Team news

Manchester United’s Scott McTominay is likely to be in the squad for the first time since suffering a knee ligament injury on Boxing Day.

Odion Ighalo could make his home debut and a first start, while Mason Greenwood is struggling with illness.

Watford full-back Kiko Fermenia might return after missing seven matches because of a thigh injury.

Ismaila Sarr, who has been sidelined for four games with a hamstring problem, will be assessed.

Manchester United boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer spoke about rotation and about getting valuable points to get into the top six by the end of the season.

Yeah, of course, it is team selection, you’ve got to maybe rotate in Europe like we’ve done, then maybe go back to what we were at Chelsea last week, or this week. Play three games in a week here, but take our chances. I feel that Bruno and Odion coming in will get more goals in the team. That’s been lacking. The games we’ve lost – West Ham, Burnley, Palace, Bournemouth – we’ve had chances but we haven’t scored goals. Definitely today we can see Bruno gives us another dimension.

Watford boss Nigel Pearson spoke to Premier League Productions regarding Watford and the chance of Watford staying up.

“I believe we can do it,” he told Premier League Productions. “I honestly think that. We’ve got a very good, realistic chance. We’ve got to be able to find a way of functioning as close to maximum as we can even when not at our maximum. It’s a difficult thing to do but that’s what we are trying to do.”

“You don’t want to get yourself into a situation where you’ve got to do that,” said Pearson. “It’s very dangerous to do that. What we mustn’t do is think that we’ve done that there [at Leicester]and so it will work here. It doesn’t work like that.

“I’m different, he [Craig Shakespeare] is different, the players are different, the circumstances are different. Our biggest job is to free them [the players]up so they can still go out and enjoy playing football, which is a very difficult thing to do and a very easy thing to say.”

Head-to-head

Manchester United have won 16 of the past 18 meetings in all competitions, but one of the exceptions came in the reverse fixture in December when Watford won 2-0 at Vicarage Road. Watford are winless in all 12 league away matches against Manchester United (D2, L10), losing their last eight.