Watford ‘should have put the game to bed’ – Slaven Bilic

Posted Wednesday, November 09, 2022 by PA

Slaven Bilic believes Watford should have made their dominance pay off earlier as they defeated Reading at Vicarage Road.

A penalty and a late strike by Joao Pedro puts the Hertfordshire side into the play-off places in their final home game before the World Cup.

The Croatian was pleased with the overall performance of his side, but felt the game should have been comfortably sewn up much sooner.

He said: “The only thing I was unhappy about was that we were one goal up, but we should have put the game to bed earlier – although we never looked like conceding.

“It was aggressive, passing the ball and switching sides. We had 11 individual performances that were very good.

“It was a dominant performance, the mentality and passing was really good from the first minute – we were much better.

“In every game you know you can do better, but today we didn’t make too many of them.”

Watford took the lead after 15 minutes through the spot-kick by Pedro after he was hauled down in the area by Ovie Ejaria.

A poor start got even worse for Reading after half an hour when Pedro trod on the foot of keeper Joe Lumley, who had to be replaced by Dean Bouzanis.

Pedro’s 64th-minute effort from outside the box was turned away to safety by Bouzanis but the closest Reading came to an equaliser was Tom Ince firing over the bar after a well-worked free-kick with 14 minutes remaining.

Sarr almost put the game out of reach after rounding Bouzanis, but Amadou Mbengue was able to head off the line.

The game was finally won four minutes from time when Pedro netted his second on the volley after Bouzanis spilled his effort.

Defeat leaves Reading with one win in nine but despite their latest setback, manager Paul Ince felt the only difference was poor decision-making by his side.

He said “I’m disappointed with the penalty, in the first 15 minutes we caused them problems.

“Then we made a stupid foul in the area. They’re a top team and we helped them.

“After that we played some good stuff but we lacked some cutting edge up front.

“We’re a mix-and-match team but we competed and gave it our all. They had two moments with the penalty and the second goal that cost us the game.

“The performance hasn’t disappointed me but some of the decision-making has, especially at the back.”