Chelsea talking tactics: Watford is still standing despite relegation fears

Chelsea needs to rebound quickly from their loss to West Ham. Watford is in a relegation battle, but they are still standing tall as they look to escape.

Watford go through managers in a way that would have made 2000s Roman Abramovich declare the “the game has gone mad”. They started the season with Javi Garcia (who had been linked to Chelsea and led them to the FA Cup final last season). He was replaced in only September by the returning Quique Sanchez Flores (who never should have been sacked by Watford in the first place). But Flores found life much different three years after his first stint and he too was sacked. Enter Nigel Pearson.

History will largely forget about it other than as a footnote prequel, but Pearson pulled Leicester out from the very bottom of the table to safety the season before they won the Premier League. He was sacked due to his son getting caught in a very unsavory video and Claudio Ranieri made it his story. Pearson spent the meantime briefly at Derby and even abroad (a rarity for English managers) before the Watford opportunity came along.

Things started according to plan for Pearson’s Watford. A loss to Liverpool aside, it took his Watford team 10 games to see a second loss. Then the wheels came back off. Watford has won just once in the nine games after that and it was ironically against Liverpool. But Watford has a knack for standing tall and surviving regardless of who is manager. And as Liverpool showed, big teams like Chelsea cannot rest on their laurels against them.

Pearson’s main accomplishment has been reigning in some of the fluidity (and therefore, confusion) seen under Garcia and Flores. He has made Watford a much more organized and team focused unit. While they do not look as pretty as they once did, they at least can survive longer.

Generally, Watford has lined up in a 4-2-3-1 with a 4-4-2 occasional thrown in. The difference is minimal as only one player really shifts in the formation. They will attack in the former shape and defend in the latter. Again, blurred lines when it comes to formations.

One of the small, yet important, changes Pearson has made has been to reel in Watford’s high line. Watford had been getting destroyed all season by having been caught out, but it took their third manager to say “hey maybe we should not be that aggressive”. It has not necessarily worked, but it at least stopped the bleeding.

The front two will still try to press whoever is on the ball, especially if that someone is a deeper midfield player. Whether it be Jorginho, N’Golo Kante, or someone else, they will have a target on their back and Chelsea will be forced to build up out wide before trying to break through Watford’s two banks of four.

Watford being a deeper sitting team and having a player like Troy Deeney up top tends to flavor their attack in one particular way: get the ball to the target man. That should not be new or unexpected by Chelsea, but it does tend to catch the Blues off guard when they are feeling themselves (which is all too often for a team that struggles defensively as often as they do).

And with players like Roberto Pereyra, Abdoulaye Doucoure, Ismaila Sarr, and Will Hughes, Watford has multiple players who can feed Deeney and threaten Chelsea in ways the Blues tend to struggle. West Ham already gave a blue print on how to beat the Blues this week and Watford need merely copy it to have a solid chance.