Liverpool midfielder James Milner has hailed the Reds’ battling qualities after they maintained their remarkable Premier League form with a scrappy 2-0 win against bottom of the table club Watford.
A brace from Mohamed Salah earned the Merseyside giants their 16th win in 17 league games for the league leaders at a windy Anfield, but the Reds certainly did not have things all their own way as their struggling opponents Watford offered a consistent threat on the counter-attack with their pacey attackers.
In their first game under new head coach Nigel Pearson, Watford was guilty of two big misses from Abdoulaye Doucoure and Ismaila Sarr, either side of Salah’s first-half opening goal but the visitors remained in the contest until the Egyptian struck again in the final minute of the game.
And while speaking to BT Sport, the 32-year-old veteran midfielder James Milner explained that it was a tough afternoon because the new manager would motivate the troops, “They were always going to be up for it, a new manager coming in. We know what Nige is like as well, they’re having a bad time but we knew it would be tough and it proved to be that.”
The reporters then asked that Englishman about the weather conditions after he signed a new contract extension with the European champions, and Milner replied by stating ”It’s not nice, obviously. It affects everything, the touch, the longer passes, crosses, but you have to deal with it. It’s the same for both teams and sometimes you’ve just got to scrap it out. It can’t always be pretty and nice football, and that’s an important result, to get those three points in the way we did, battling it out.”
Salah’s first goal came 58 seconds after Doucoure had fluffed a chance at the other end with an easy chance to give the visitors the lead and the Liverpool forward cut in from the left following a breakaway and beat Ben Foster with a glorious curling finish before a cheeky backheel late in the game to seal the points.
