The pain and humiliation felt by players, supporters and management alike following Watford's 6-1 mauling at Liverpool in November was tough to take.

Seeing your team beaten is one thing; seeing them taken apart in quite the manner the Hornets were, by an admittedly sensational Reds side, is quite another.

The embarrassment of such a scoreline has stayed with Walter Mazzarri, at least, who admitted it was the harshest he has been on the end of in his managerial career to date.

He is hoping it remains in the minds of his players, too, and has as good as had his team-talk written for him long before Monday night's televised game kicks off.

“I have been and will be reminding the players about it to motivate them,” he said. “It does not matter if you are the best team or the worst team, if you do as well as you can you can overcome a higher team and that’s what I’m trying to do.

“I want them to go out and think they are playing in the Champions League final, and we will see what the value of that is after the game.

“I think it was our worst performance of the season. There was another one against Tottenham but we had an injury crisis a that point, but those were the two stand-outs.”