Abdoulaye Doucoure heaped praise on Watford head coach Nigel Pearson after he orchestrated a shock victory over Premier League leaders Liverpool.

The Hornets went into the game on the back of a five game winless run, with Liverpool unbeaten in 44, but Doucoure insists there was never a moment when Pearson did not believe a win over the Reds was anything other than a possibility.

"It's a huge huge win today," said the French midfielder.

"Before the week, the manager told us we could do it, he never talked about having a draw or something like that, he always talked about winning and today I think we saw all the boys they gave everything on the pitch and I think of course we deserved it.

"The last five games we were a little bit unlucky in some of the games, but today we said we had a chance to do something else, we need to win, we need to take points. We saw the results before the game was not too good for us because Bournemouth drew, other teams won just before us, but today was a great game, we had a plan. All the credit is for the manager and the players and the fans as well who believed in us."

Despite a strong opening to proceedings, things looked to be taking a turn for the worse when Gerard Deulofeu was stretchered off with a bad looking injury to his right knee, but the Hornets manfully stuck to their task and produced arguably the biggest shock of the season.

Doucoure now wants to see his team-mates use the performance as a benchmark for the remainder of their campaign, with ten games remaining to avoid relegation.

"We were unlucky with the Geri [Deulofeu] injury," he said.

"We hope it's not too bad, but today we also have a lot of great news for us and we need to keep doing this until the end of the season now.

"Like Troy and like a lot of players said, you have a standard and every game you start you need to have a standard and to fight for each ball. Of course, sometimes you will lose, but days like today, when the results come for us, it's great."