‘Be Ready For The Challenge’ – Cifuentes Previews Watford

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‘Be Ready For The Challenge’ – Cifuentes Previews Watford

Martí Cifuentes spoke of the team’s eagerness to produce a much-improved display on home soil when Watford arrive in Leicester on Friday afternoon.

2025-12-24T09:00+00:00

by Sam Jones

Published

24 Dec, 2025

‘Be Ready For The Challenge’ – Cifuentes Previews Watford

Martí Cifuentes spoke of the team’s eagerness to produce a much-improved display on home soil when Watford arrive in Leicester on Friday afternoon.

Sam Jones

2025-12-24T09:00+00:00

‘Be Ready For The Challenge’ – Cifuentes Previews Watford

Martí Cifuentes spoke of the team’s eagerness to produce a much-improved display on home soil when Watford arrive in Leicester on Friday afternoon.

Sam Jones

2025-12-24T09:00+00:00

‘Be Ready For The Challenge’ – Cifuentes Previews Watford

Martí Cifuentes spoke of the team’s eagerness to produce a much-improved display on home soil when Watford arrive in Leicester on Friday afternoon.

Sam Jones

2025-12-24T09:00+00:00

‘Be Ready For The Challenge’ – Cifuentes Previews Watford

Martí Cifuentes spoke of the team’s eagerness to produce a much-improved display on home soil when Watford arrive in Leicester on Friday afternoon.

Sam Jones

2025-12-24T09:00+00:00

Our first game back after Christmas sees us welcome the Hornets to King Power Stadium for a Boxing Day bout between two sides positioned just one point apart as we close in on the halfway stage of the 25/26 campaign.

Ahead of the Filbert Way match-up, City’s Manager sat down with the media to discuss recent form, the festive fixture schedule and why it’s important to give something back to the Blue Army…

‘No hiding’

A day to forget in west London.

Plenty of lessons have been taken away from last weekend’s 4-1 defeat at Queens Park Rangers, the Spaniard revealed, with frustrations clear to see after a three-game unbeaten run in the Sky Bet Championship came to an end.

“Definitely it was very disappointing, especially the first half,” he admitted, speaking in his pre-match press conference at LCFC Training Ground on Tuesday. “It was far from what we expected coming from a good week.

“We spoke with the players about the reasons why we had this type of performance and the kind of things we shouldn’t repeat and what gives us the competitive level that we need and showed in the previous week.

“Obviously, there’s no hiding. We cannot just forget what happened but try to improve and move on quick because we have a quick turnaround and it’s an opportunity to show that it was disappointing and not what we want to be.

“It’s very unusual that a team concedes these results in one half. I’m aware that it has been an issue for a long time here and we are trying to address it, we are trying to fix it.

“Obviously, it is not only the start of the game, after only one minute-and-a-half to concede a goal is always difficult, but we are trying to work on what we need in these kind of scenarios if such a thing happens.

“I talk about consistency a lot and that has been one of my big themes since coming here. By improving certain things, we are going to improve this consistency. I think the team has been able to turn results before.

“The last one against Norwich, we concede in a difficult game and the team has the reaction and the capacity to turn the result. We know we’re capable of doing it and that’s what we need to look at.

“Sometimes it can happen that you concede first; you cannot only expect to win games where you take the lead, but have the strength to go through those moments, especially in the Championship where the games can switch very quickly.”

‘In a good trend’

The man in the Vicarage Road hot seat.

The visitors come into this one on a four-game unbeaten streak, winning twice in that period under the management of Javi Gracia, in his second spell in charge of the Hertfordshire club. Losing players to the Africa Cup of Nations is yet to dent their current momentum, either.

“It’s a team that is in a good trend,” Cifuentes analysed. “With a manager who managed to win the last game against Stoke, who are also a good team. It’s a very clear style with an experienced manager who has been coaching in different leagues but in England before as well.

“He knows the club. It’s a team with a clear system in the way they defend and attack. We need to be ready. They have players at AFCON but they have plenty of young guys and are physically a strong team. We need to be ready for the challenge.”

‘The commitment is there’

Answering questions from reporters ahead of the fixture.

With consecutive home games providing an opportunity to finish the year strongly, Cifuentes is solely focused on a positive result in the clash with Watford at this stage, before turning attention to hosting Derby County three days later.

The 43-year-old added: “We definitely want to have a good performance in front of our fans to apologise as well for the result in the last game. We are all disappointed and I can tell you that no one was more disappointed than me.

“It was a tough day but we have to move on and prepare this game in the best way we can. I always say that good teams react very strongly after a bad defeat. That’s what our focus is. We have done it before and that’s what the target is, to make sure that we have a good game.

“I believe in professionalism. The fact that it’s Christmas is really special in the football world. It’s only in England you play at this time of the year, but I know that it’s important and connected to the tradition of English football.

“We need 100 per cent to connect to our job and the commitment is there to give them something back. I like to go game-by-game. The target is to have a good training week.

“I’m a big believer that the process that you start to win games is during the week by training well, by pushing everyone on what we want to achieve, have a good first half, have a good second half, hopefully get three points and then go again.

“In a league like this, when you have quick turnarounds, it’s very important that you go step by step.”

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