Early teams news Manchester United v Watford in Premier League 26 February 2022

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WATFORD TEAM NEWS

Former-United striker Josh King, who has been leading the Watford line alongside Emmanuel Dennis, was brought off in their Wednesday match against Crystal Palace. He had suffered a knock to his back in training and was replaced by Cucho Hernandez after 51 minutes.

Manager Hodgson said he didn’t know the severity of King’s problem.

“He took a knock in our last training session, unfortunately, so this exacerbated the problem for him,” the former-England boss said.

“But it was the right time to make a change, I thought. Cucho Hernandez has been someone we’ve had an eye on in training. We of course, Ray [Lewington] and I, don’t know him that well. We’ve not seen that much of him. We’ve only had a month to work with him in training and we wanted maybe to see what he could do. With Josh perhaps not being 100 per cent in form, it was a good decision, we thought, to take Josh off and give Cucho his chance.

“In the same way we took Tom Cleverley off who’d done well for us but it’s the second game in three days. He worked very hard. We thought this was a chance for Edo Kayembe to show what he could do.”

Joao Pedro and Juraj Kucka didn’t quite make the match against Palace but have been close to a return, Hodgson says, and seem set to be available for this match. Meanwhile, Cameroonian defender Nicolas Nkoulou is a long-term absentee due to a hamstring injury.

We’ll learn more on all of the above when Hodgson speaks to the press on Friday.

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