Real Football Man All of the Football, All of the time
Watford start this afternoon in 8th and if results were to go their way they could climb to the heady heights of 6th place. To do so they will have to beat Stoke and hope that both Manchester United and Everton later today. They may not be able to control matters elsewhere but they will certainly be looking for back to back league wins.
That’s because last week saw them play host to champions Leicester and run out 2-1 winners. Etienne Capoue has kept up his impressive goalscoring exploits this season as he added his 5th of the campaign after just 33 seconds and that set The Hornets well on their way to victory.
Watford will be happy with their league placing but if there was one thing that they still need to change is the fact that they concede too many goals. They are the highest placed league side to have a negative goal difference, with 17 goals scored and 20 conceded in their first 12 matches.
They’ll welcome a Stoke side to Vicarage Road who they themselves have had their own defensive issues already this season but thankfully Mark Hughes has somewhat plugged that gap and a more positive run of results has seen them build some distance between them and the bottom three but not as much as Hughes would like.
Stoke currently find themselves 14th but a win could very well see them move into the top half of the table, such is the congested nature of that bottom half of the table then it only requires a couple of wins to completely change the outlook for your team.
Last weekend Stoke lost to Bournemouth a result which bought to an end their impressive run of 6 games without a win and many feel that the run should have now stood at 7. But for a Bojan missed penalty then it would probably been the case.
Stoke may have solved their relative defensive crisis but they could still do with some more efficiency up front, they’ve only managed to find the net on just 13 occasions. That just being over 1 per game on average from their opening 12 games.
And they are going to need to find the net as Watford are always capable of scoring in front of their own fans and I don’t think they will have any troubles in doing so today. In fact I think Walter Mazzari’s side will run out comfortable winners this lunchtime. I’ll go for a home win.
