Roy Hodgson thinks Watford might not sell Ismaila Sarr

The club's record signing has struggled to make an impact in recent weeks, but said he was fully committed to the fight for Premier League survival after an agent said it was almost inevitable he would be moving on.

Should the Hornets be relegated at the end of the season, as appears likely, the Senegal international is one of a few players who could be sold to raise funds to pay for a promotion push.

However, the manager believes that his talents may be more useful to the club than any finances he can bring in.

"It would depend upon what the potential suitors want to see, I suppose," said Hodgson when asked what Sarr needed to improve upon in order to attract a potential summer move. "But I'm not aware that he's up for sale; I didn't realise the club were interested in selling. I've always thought the club would be interested in keeping him, so if the worst happens and the club gets relegated, he'll be one of the players that will get them back up again."

Another player who could depart at the end of the current campaign is top scorer Emmanuel Dennis, who has also been attracting interest from elsewhere this season.

Hodgson praised the Nigerian for his performance during a difficult afternoon at the Etihad Stadium where Watford were thrashed 5-1 by Manchester City.

Goalscorer Hassane Kamara also impressed Hodgson in the match.

"There were performances out of the 11 players that I'm not unhappy with, and they were two of them. They of course did extremely well," continued Hodgson.

"But if you're going to get something up here, apart from not putting yourself 1-0 down after four minutes and conceding a goal one minuted in the second half, if we take that aside, what you've got to do during the rest of the 90 minutes, you've got to get quite a few ticks by the names a lot of players, who come off and you say, 'he did well today and he had a good game and he did exactly what we were looking for'. I don't think we had enough ticks."