Watford welcome West Ham to Vicarage Road in a huge festive midweek Premier League clash at both ends of the table.
With Leeds’ match postponed, victory would lift Watford up to 16th in the table.
If Tottenham lose at Southampton, West Ham can reclaim fifth with a win until Thursday evening at minimum.
Team News
Adam Masina could return for Watford after recovering from a thigh injury.
Francisco Sierralta (hamstring) is also set to return but Ben Foster (groin), Christian Kabasele (calf) Peter Etebo (quad), Kwadwo Baah (ankle), Nicolas N’Koulou (hamstring) and Ismaila Sarr (knee) remain absent.
West Ham will be without Declan Rise after he picked up his fifth booking of the season in their Boxing Day defeat against Southampton.
Aaron Cresswell (back), Kurt Zouma (hamstring) and Angelo Ogbonna (knee) remain ruled out.
Stat Attack
- Watford have won just one of their last five meetings against West Ham (W1, L4).
- West Ham have lost two of their last five trips to Vicarage Road (W2, D1, L2), with both losses coming in 2-0 defeats in October 2015 and November 2017 respectively.
- The Hammers won each of their last two meetings against Watford by 3-1 results in 2019-20 season.
- Emmanuel Dennis has produced five assists for Watford this season.
- West Ham’s last four away bookings in the Premier League have all been shown to defenders – Declan Rice, Craig Dawson and Vladimir Coufal who received two yellow cards against Arsenal.
Prediction
With defending being Watford’s biggest weakness in the first half of this season, it will be interesting to see if this recent Coronavirus-enforced mini break has enabled the Hornets to reset defensively but they will need to build on their attacking improvements though.
West Ham meanwhile lacked firepower in the first half of their Boxing Day defeat yet showed a strong team spirit to fight back twice to level in the second half, yet were undone by scrappy poor defending which now puts their top four hopes in danger of fading.
This game however is one which should suit West Ham because Watford’s defence is vulnerable and if they turn up with a strong aggressive attacking style, this should be a routine result unless the Hornets have actually focused on making improvements during their time off.
Prediction: Watford 1-2 West Ham
Result: Watford 1-4 West Ham