Stoke City 0-4 Watford: Slaven Bilic gets off to winning start as Hornets boss

Ken Sema scored the second at Stoke - for only his second goal of the season

New Watford manager Slaven Bilic got off to a sensational winning start as his rampant Hornets side scored four goals at Stoke.

Ismaila Sarr earned Watford a deserved half-time lead when he evaded the linesman's flag to controversially head home from 12 yards.

But there was no doubt about any of the other Watford goals as the visitors snuffed out any hopes of a second-half rally when they scored three times in the final half-hour.

Ken Sema got a close-range second on 64 minutes, before Keinan Davis and Vakoun Bayo wrapped up their biggest win in 18 months.

For Alex Neil's hapless Potters, it was the biggest defeat since Stoke returned to the Championship in 2018 - having last shipped four on home soil in September 2017 against Chelsea, who then won the return 5-0 at Stamford Bridge three months later.

After a fraught week, when many Hornets fans were stunned by Rob Edwards' sacking on Monday, Bilic needed to instigate an instant lift after becoming their ninth manager in three years. And Watford found the ideal opponents in sorry Stoke.

Ken Sema scored the second at Stoke - for only his second goal of the season

The hosts were out of luck when Watford went ahead when, from Hassane Kamara's superb ball in from the left, Sarr's powerful header should have been disallowed for offside - a second moment of 12th-minute magic in the Midlands for him in two months after his 'halfway line' goal at The Hawthorns in August.

Watford then went desperately close to two more. Both Sarr and Sema, together with the help of home keeper Joe Bursik, hit the post after Kamara had caused further problems down the left.

And the hosts were limited to two moments for Liam Delap, who went for glory rather than pick out co-striker Dwight Gayle after briefly showing his pace and power to muscle his way into a scoring opportunity, then was wide with the last kick of the half.

Watford defender Francisco Sierralta should then have scored with a free header six yards out before Stoke skipper Lewis Baker's free-kick tested former Potters keeper Daniel Bachmann for the first time.

And then, just as Stoke looked as if they might get back in it, came the key second goal when Hamza Choudhury put in a block which scooped the ball back into the danger area, Davis challenged, the ball deflected off Bursik across goal and Sema did enough to prod the ball over the line.

Davis, like Sema, then also notched his second goal of the season when he powered his way into space to arrow home an angled left-foot finish - and six minutes later Bayo completed Watford's biggest win since Sarr and Sema scored twice each to help beat Dean Holden's Bristol City 6-0 in February 2021.

Who's next?

Both sides are back in action on Wednesday as the Championship fixtures start coming thick and fast.

Stoke, who stay in 17th, having won just once in five games since Alex Neil came in to replace the sacked Michael O'Neill, go to fourth-placed Burnley.

Watford, now up to seventh after ending their run of three league games without a win, are at home to 11th-placed Swansea City.

Stoke City manager Alex Neil told BBC Radio Stoke:

"When you lose any game in a manner like that it's really disappointing and frustrating. It was certainly a bit of an eye opener.

"As an individual and the pride you've got as a team, you've got to rally, you've got to give it a go and you've got to never give in. And I don't think we can say that.

"You've got to have an inner pride where you're not going to accept getting beat and you're not going to accept not doing the basics well enough.

"You can get beat by any team if they're better, but from the second goal onwards it was the basics which let us down.

"We're playing with a lack of confidence in the first instance. You've got to build confidence and that comes from results, but you've got to build something to be the bedrock of that and that's got to be resilience."

Watford boss Slaven Bilic:

"It's the dream start. A great win for us. A clean sheet, four goals, the strikers scoring goals. That's what you dream of before games.

"We aren't going to rave now because we won, but this is the blueprint that we want to follow. This is the pattern. This is a great of example of what we should do.

"We should try and improve on this. We wanted something to build on and we showed that. I want us to play like that and play with confidence.

"That's not always easy because you have the crowd, you have the media, you have those question marks rising when you are losing. But that's the goal. That's the aim, to still play confidently when we are losing."