Having surrendered the lead to a couple of quickfire Coventry goals, William Troost-Ekong admitted he couldn’t have picked a better time to open his Watford account.
In the space of a minute, the Hornets’ one-goal advantage was overturned by Gustavo Hamer and Tyler Walker, but it took just a further two minutes for Watford to pull level courtesy of Troost-Ekong’s first goal in yellow.
“James Garner put a fantastic ball in and made it easy, I just had to run on to it,” said the defender, who headed home from the Manchester United loanee’s corner.
“It was an important moment and set-pieces are so important in this league, you see how they can change games. It’s been going against us so far this season so to score from a set-piece is massive.
“I’m happy I managed to contribute like that today and hopefully we can get some more during the season.”
Having scored eight in their first nine games, Watford have now managed six in the space of three days, and Troost-Ekong believes their improved record in front of goal bodes well.
“The goals for are really important,” said the Nigerian international. “We have to do a bit better, we’ve been conceding too many in the last few games but there’s so much we can still improve and I think this team has so much potential.
“We just have to keep going and keep working, keep the goalscoring going and hopefully we won’t concede as many goals from set-pieces as we have done.
“The first half we were dominant but just missing a goal. We played well in possession today, we moved the ball better than we did in the previous games and it’s always nice when we score the first goal.
“We lost ourselves for a minute when they got the two goals back, but we showed great character to come out with the three points.”
Victory lifts Vladimir Ivić’s men into second, one point off table-toppers Reading, going into the international break, something Troost-Ekong believes is important for confidence despite the relatively early stage of the season.
“If you’re looking at the target for the rest of the season, we need to stay on course, so it’s important we stay up in the table, but everyone knows how close it is,” he said.
“If we’d lost today we might have dropped five, six or seven places, so I don’t think you can really look at the table yet, but it’s important for the feeling and for the momentum.”
