Watford manager Vladimir Ivic may opt to rest Nigeria defender William Troost-Ekong for Saturday’s away trip to Queens Park Rangers.
Troost-Ekong played twice for Nigeria while on international duty and only returned to London on Thursday.
Ivic had not been able to practise with his full defensive complement until Thursday, giving him just two days to assess some of his players’ fitness and levels of fatigue, with some international sides playing as many as three games over the international break.
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“I wanted to [work on defending] but I couldn’t,” said Ivic.
“We know that four of our central defenders were out, and our left back, with the national team, we speak about Wilmot, we speak about Cathcart, we speak about Ekong, we speak about Sema. Their first day will be today [Thursday] to work with the team.
“It’s not easy for no one. Other teams have players in international teams. I don’t know from where they are travelling but normally when you have players who travel from Africa or South America. It’s not easy to come back today into the practice immediately because they need to adapt, they need to sleep.
“It’s a normal process. I hope they will be ready for the game. We have to practice with them tomorrow. We have these two days to prepare the team for the next game and we will do our best that we can to prepare them to be ready to play and to win the game.”
