Ben Watson believes Watford have a "fantastic chance" of beating Manchester City in the FA Cup final, if they get a little bit of luck.

The former Hornet scored the winning goal against City in the 2013 final when he was at Wigan Athletic, causing one of the competition's most memorable upsets.

Watson, who now plays for Nottingham Forest said he believes the pressure will be on City to win the game and that the Hornets could make the most of that.

"They need a little bit of luck, as you always do, but if they get that they’ve got a fantastic chance of winning the cup," he told the Watford website.

"It’s a game where, I think everyone knows, Watford are going to have to be at their best and, no disrespect, City are going to have to have a little bit of an off-day, and not have everyone perform the way they can.

“But, all the pressure is going to be on City. The Watford boys, the fans and the staff, they’ve got to enjoy the day, they’ve got to embrace it. It’s not often you get to an FA Cup final.

“At the end of the day it’s a football match, it’s 11 v 11 and the final can spring a few surprises.”

Watson said his Wigan side drew confidence from an impressive performance against City earlier on in the season, as well as simply having belief that they could win.

However, the Forest midfielder thinks the Citizens have improved and are now a more difficult side to beat.

He said: "We’d played City about four or five weeks before the cup final at the Etihad.

“We got beat one-nil but we performed really well, and that gave us the belief that we could beat them.

“The City team now is stronger than the City team back then, but they still had David Silva, Yaya Touré, Sergio Agüero, Carlos Tevez, Samir Nasri and Vincent Kompany – it was super-strong.

“City were a fantastic team but we had that belief, and it’s a one off game.

“I had no sleepless nights beforehand, it was just a case of taking in the moment in and enjoying it.

“On the day, we performed well, and they probably did have that off-day that we needed.”

Watson was part of the Watford side that lost in the FA Cup semi-final against Crystal Palace in 2016 and said the club still has a place in his heart.

He said he has been impressed by the Hornets' performances this season and that having belief in themselves could be the difference between them picking up the trophy and not this Saturday.

“I always keep an eye out for the Watford results, I still have a lot of friends at the club and speak to a few of the boys," he said.

“They’ve played in big games before. In the semi-final we had a few years ago [against Crystal Palace] we never got over the line, but the lads have done it this year.

“We believed, and that’s what Watford have got to do.

“I watched them against Arsenal where they had 10 men for 80-plus minutes, and they were fantastic.

“We were ‘little Wigan’ at the time, and it was our first FA Cup final. There was no pressure whatsoever on our shoulders.

“No-one believed we could win. The only people that believed we could do it were the boys in the changing room and the staff around the club.

“We created that atmosphere by beating a few good teams on the way to the final and giving City a good game at the Etihad."