Nacho Monreal has encouraged his teammates to put in a similar performance against Watford as we did in our 2-0 win over Everton, which he describes as perfect.

The left-back believes our secret lies in the entire team chipping in and defending as a unit. If there’s one weak link, the whole system fails. This was something we executed well against Everton and need to repeat in our Premier League fixture against Watford at the weekend.

“We have some quality players so the basis of our play is to keep the ball, maintain possession for long periods and get into the opposition half by playing the ball around – that’s what we try to do,” Nacho said to Arsenal Player.

“That said, you need to be a complete team across the board and when we don’t have the ball we have to put the hard work in, defend as a team and stick together because then when we recover possession, we have players capable of bringing out the magic inside them and making us a really dangerous side.

“In that regard the match [against Everton] was perfect. The first half was fantastic in every sense – we performed very well both with and without the ball. We barely gave them any chances, as soon as we lost the ball we were able to win it back straight away because our positioning was good and we were pressing really well.

“We study our opposition closely throughout the week to identify where we think we can hurt them. Aside from keeping possession and taking the easy option, you have to try to target the opposition’s weaknesses to work a scoring opportunity and score the goal that makes the difference and secures you the three points.

Monreal continued, “We’re aware that we don’t just depend on ourselves – that’s obvious. Right now we’re in third place so I think the only objective we need to set for ourselves is winning the eight matches we have left and then what will be will be. It’s not just down to us. Even if we do win all eight games that doesn’t mean we’ll be champions, but what does depend on us is winning those eight games.

“We’re coming off the back of two really good performances, the most recent of which we won. We know it’s going to be difficult against Watford because we only played them recently and they knocked us out of the FA Cup, but we’re hungry for revenge.

“It’s a completely different competition. They’re not fighting for big things so we need to show that we are. We need to show we’re the home side and that we want to keep fighting for the league title. That’s what we’re going to do.”

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LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND – MARCH 19: Nacho Monreal of Arsenal controls the ball during the Barclays Premier League match between Everton and Arsenal at Goodison Park on March 19, 2016 in Liverpool, England. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty images)

Last time we faced the Hornets it was in the FA Cup at the Emirates and the London team managed to knock us out of the competition we’d held for two seasons. Hopefully, the gutting loss marks a turning point and we can end the season on a high. However, now the title appears to be out of our hands, it’s difficult to see us finishing as well as we’d like.

All we can do now is turn up against Watford, get the three points and push on.