Odion Ighalo helped Watford to fire their Champions League charge with a comprehensive victory over a Liverpool team who lag in mid-table. It is not a sentence that might plausibly have been conceived at the beginning of the season but this is no ordinary season and Watford are riding the wave of the craziness.

Quique Sánchez Flores’ team registered a fourth consecutive victory to lift them to within a point of the top four and this was their first major scalp of what is becoming an incredible season for them. The manager had made Premier League survival the priority but, right now, the possibilities feel rather greater than that.

Ighalo added to Nathan Aké’s opener with his 11th and 12th goals of the league campaign and when he was substituted in the last minute, he departed to thunderous acclaim. The home crowd, who must be pinching themselves, had unfurled a banner beforehand that paid tribute to the club’s owners, the Pozzo family.