Soccer-Watford's target of survival has not changed, says Silva

Oct 26 (Reuters) - Watford's primary goal of staying in the Premier League has not changed despite their strong start to the season, manager Marco Silva said ahead of Saturday's home game against Stoke City.

Watford have collected 15 points from nine games and are flying high at sixth in the table with their only defeats coming against champions Chelsea and league leaders Manchester City.

The Hornets, who began the season with a 3-3 draw against Liverpool, shocked Arsenal 2-1 before losing 4-2 to Chelsea last week and Silva was keen to stress that safeguarding the club's top-flight status was his priority.

"The only thing realistic for us... is that we don't change our goal and our goal is clear for everybody, to keep Watford as a Premier League club," the Portuguese told a news conference on Thursday.

"It's clear nobody is changing our goal. I don't need to talk to my players every day about this situation because they know and we think in each game this is our way.

"Of course I believe we can achieve our goal. I believe we can do better than in the last two seasons because we work for that but our goal is to keep the club in the Premier League."

Watford ended last season just above the relegation zone and Silva said it was still too early to update his targets beyond ensuring Premier League survival.

"Why would I change?" he asked. "Of course I am happy with the way we play. I am happy that we compete in every match. We compete in our style of play. We showed in the last match what is our way and why change?"

"Everything starts now. It's too early to change something. We need to prove every day and in every match what we want and the next game is a big challenge to prove again that we are going in the right way."

Stoke are 17th in the table and have eight points from nine league games this season for their worst start in the top-flight since 2008-09. (Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in Bengaluru, editing by Ed Osmond)