Chelsea and Watford have a shared bond in never settling on a manger for long term. Watford has hit reset again making this one a wildcard.
Chelsea has long been seen as the club that fires managers for the slightest of failings. It was not until more recent years that they at least started waiting for the end of the season before pulling the plug. But it is not as though their habit of firing and hiring managers constantly is a hobby the Blues have enjoyed alone. Watford is also a club that loves a good switcharoo when it comes to the manager.
In Chelsea’s case it makes sense. At that elite level, margins are slim and to even dare come down on the wrong side can set a club back immensely. But Watford? Watford does it for fun. They have been in and out of midtable for years but have never really been in an extended relegation battle. Despite that, they have fired and hired no less than a manager per season since returning to the Premier League. In that time the club has finished 13th, 17th, 14th, and 11th while making the FA Cup semifinals twice and once making it to the final.
Watford, like Chelsea, is a club that has never really settled for “good enough”. But perhaps Watford has recognized that they have been a little too quick to pull the trigger at times. So with Javi Gracia’s Watford collapsing, they returned to their first manager in this current Premier League era that they never really should have fired in the first place: Quique Sanchez Flores.
Perhaps the only consistent thing about Watford’s managers has been their love of a 4-4-2 but also their recognition of when things need to be tweaked. Overall though, they almost always return to some sort of 4-4-2 variant and Flores will not be much different. In the short term however, Flores has been utilizing a 3-5-2/5-3-2 to try to stop the bleeding first. Given that Watford has only won in the Carabao Cup this season, the 3-5-2/5-3-2 is sure to stick around for a while yet.
Flores has even admitted that the formation is against his own desires but at his heart he is a pragmatist. He will break away from his own desires if it means Watford stops conceding (they have not) or means they start scoring (they have not).
Overall, this match has a high chance of looking a lot like the Newcastle game. Watford, even being at home, will try to keep it tight and play on the counter. Watford’s biggest strength in the Premier League has almost always been a strong striker duo and they will look to play into that strength.
But this is a team weak to attacks from wide. That is Chelsea’s preferred avenue of build up, but as Manchester United just showed, a 3-5-2/5-3-2 can force the Blues into the areas their players are less comfortable in. Flores will have watched that match and taken some solace in his current formation choice.
Knowing a thing and doing a thing are two different things though. Watford has shown they can be a squad that hangs with the best just as often as they have shown they are nowhere close. A point will do for the Hornets and they will play safety first rather than looking to sneak a win past Frank Lampard’s Chelsea.
This would be an easy game to be overconfident about, but so long as Chelsea learned their lessons from midweek, it should all be routine.