Another busy week in the Premier League begins on Friday night when two of the London brigade meet in the west when Brentford play host to Watford in a match which isn’t must-win for either but both will probably be keen not to lose.
These two have generally made acceptable starts to a first campaign back in the top flight, which in the case of Brentford is their first for many years, but they have just offered signs of finding the going a little tough recently and have a chance to address that here.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full in the Friday Night Football show which will be on the Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Premier League channels. The build-up begins at 7pm ahead of an 8pm kick off.
Brentford
When the season began Brentford were a breath of fresh air to the league, taking the game to everyone and having a real good go whether it was a team at the top of the league or one near the bottom. As injuries have begun to bite them though they have eased back a little and while they have had a bit of bad luck along the way with goalkeepers playing out of their skins against them and late goals going in, results are beginning to go against them.
Brentford haven’t looked the same side since David Raya went down with an injury and now have just one win in their last eight matches, an unconvincing victory over a poor Everton side in a match the Bees were clinging on for dear life by come the end. Brentford are averaging two goals against them in their last seven matches despite a clean sheet against Everton and that isn’t a good thing for a newly promoted side, especially with top scorer Ivan Toney having his own injury issues.
Watford
Surprisingly this deep into December, Watford are only on their second manager of the season and for all Claudio Ranieri has done in the game he might well need a win soon if he is going to be in place when Santa comes down the chimney. The Hornets go into this match having lost five of their last six matches and while the last three defeats were to Leicester City, Chelsea and Manchester City, in which they gave fair accounts of themselves in two of those matches, those sorts of excuses don’t tend to wash with their owners.
A win here will not only smooth the path for Ranieri but it will pull Watford six points clear of the drop zone and give them a little bit of breathing room heading into the Christmas period. Watford are going to have to start defending better than they have been. They have shipped 19 goals in their last seven matches and no team who comes back into the league are going to stay up if they need to score three per match to get anything out of it.
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Team News
Brentford have one or two issues in their attacking department for this match with Ivan Toney still out after testing positive for Covid-19 while Sergi Canos picked up a fifth booking of the season at Elland Road last weekend and will miss out as a result of that.
Watford released the news that the injury to Adam Masina isn’t as bad as they first feared but he is unlikely to be available for this match. Claudio Ranieri could be able to call on Ken Sema who is back in training after a knee injury.
Betting
Both these sides go into this match in pretty poor form and both are missing some key players so I don’t really feel comfortable betting on the outcome of it, especially when there is so much Premier League action for the remainder of this month and we don’t need to take bets that aren’t there. Despite all the absences though this is a match where both teams are going to need to have a go because of their need to arrest a poor run of form.
You wouldn’t say either team have convinced defensively in recent times which should encourage both to have a bit of a go even more than normal. Both teams have tricky assignments to come in midweek so this would represent a good chance to go into those games with three points behind them and the pressure slightly off them so I expect to see a fairly open game of football and one which contains more than 2.5 goals, something the last four Watford games have contained and five of the last seven Brentford matches.
Tips
Back Over 2.5 goals for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with BetVictor
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