Mauricio Pochettino claimed he wasn’t surprised Watford didn’t start with Troy Deeney following Spurs’ 1-0 victory at White Hart Lane that lifted them up to second in the Premier League.

Quique Sanchez Flores raised plenty of eyebrows by not naming his captain in the starting XI for a Premier League game for the first time this season before introducing him from the bench at the start of the second half.

Deeney’s arrival though, did little to change a poor performance from the Hornets, who were second best in all departments and fortunate not to concede more than the one goal scored by Kieran Trippier.

They played Wednesday and maybe some were tired or not,” the Spurs boss said when asked about Deeney’s absence. “Always you prepare in your mind and on the training ground, you try to prepare different options about how they can play. We were ready if they played with one or two strikers, we’ve had a different play and it was not a surprise for me.”

Reflecting on the game, Pochettino said: “We dominated the game completely. We created the chance, it’s only 1-0 and I think we deserved to score more but we are very satisfied about the result because our objective was to win the game. We deserved the result and I’m very pleased because the effort from the players was fantastic.”

The width provided by full-backs Trippier and Ben Davies was a feature of Tottenham’s performance and Pochettino observed: “I think this was the key in the game because from the beginning Watford, the plan was to play very deep, don’t give us the space to play and play on the counter attack.

“I think that our supporters helped a lot because their energy was fantastic and to say thank you because there was a tough period because it was difficult to create a chance and we were not clinical in front of the goal. But the patience that we have and our supporters have, it was good to win the game for them.”