Troy Deeney and Odion Ighalo on their Premier League partnership

When Matej Vydra and Troy Deeney were paired together at SC Paderborn for the second and final friendly of the tour of Germany, Odion Ighalo must have wondered where he was going to fit in. He would have sat particularly uncomfortably on the bench when Deeney threaded a perfectly-weighted pass through for the Czech international to score with aplomb. Normal service resumed, you thought. It looked for all money like the famed Deeney-Vydra partnership was going to be continued for a third season out of the last four.

But two months is a long-time in football. Vydra has been jettisoned while Ighalo now finds himself as the focal point of the attack after being tried in all three positions across behind the lone striker and even starting the first game of the season on the bench. His liaison with Deeney is now the one opposition managers and pundits are saying has such telepathy.

“It doesn’t only click now,” Ighalo told Hornets Player. “We’ve been played together in the Championship, playing well and working together. He’s a great striker. I know he’s going to score goals in this league as he’s an amazing guy, an amazing striker and he works so hard in the game. I’m always happy to play with him”

The feeling is mutual.

“It’s a bit like when when Vyds first came in,” said Deeney. “He does a lot of graft for the team; he’s chasing down and holding the ball up. He’s going really well, scoring a lot of goals and long may that continue.”

As much as he says that “the main thing is the team is winning”, Deeney would love to be the one grabbing the headlines and sitting in joint third in the Premier League scoring charts with four goals.

“If he stops scoring, I need to step up,” he acknowledged to the Watford Weekend post-match show.

For now he is playing the role of chief architect. Flicks of his head created goals for Ighalo at Everton and at home to Swansea. He chested the ball brilliantly into the path of Etienne Capoue for the Frenchman to tee up the first for the Nigerian at St James’ Park and then showed an deftness of touch and immaculate timing to pick out the arcing run of his strike partner for the crucial second. Playing Deeney just behind Ighalo raised a few eyebrows but it’s proved a masterstroke.

“Deeney’s a very important player, he’s giving assistance, he’s stopping the ball on the other side of the pitch,” Quique Sanchez Flores told the press on Saturday. “Maybe it’s a few games in and he still hasn’t scored, and maybe the pressure may seem like its high, high, high but he works very hard.”

Sanchez Flores described Ighalo’s decision to turn down the lure of an awful lot of yen from Hebei China Fortune as “amazing”, almost as amazing as the club’s willingness to accept the offer for a player who finished last season with 17 goals in 20 games.

“He looks very well, his performance was amazing but so was the performance of all the players including Steve [Berghuis] and [Nathan] Ake,” said Sanchez Flores.

Find out what Sebastian Prodl made of the victory by clicking the image below

Giant Prödl on pygmy comment? “We don’t listen to expectation from the outside" http://t.co/wqaBbIBpz2 #watfordfc pic.twitter.com/REQg2qG7Ez — WD Sport (@WDSport_) September 20, 2015

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