The opening weekend in the Sky Bet Championship season concludes on Monday evening when two potential promotion chasers meet at Vicarage Road when Watford play host to Sheffield United in a heavyweight clash.
Watford are in the familiar territory of beginning another new era here with Rob Edwards taking charge for the first time while Sheffield United look a lot more settled as a club but need to repel from losing in the play-offs last term.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Football channels with the build-up beginning at Vicarage Road at 7.30pm ahead of the 8pm kick off.
Watford
It looks like Watford have had another reset. They needed to because whoever thought the Roy Hodgson experiment would yield anything other than the relegation he delivered needed their head testing. As ever when a side gets relegated players leave but to be fair to Watford they have managed to keep hold of some of their better players for now. Whether that is the case come September remains to be seen.
This feels like a big match for Watford. They ended last season unable to buy a win at home and if they start this season in the same vein then doubts will appear at the surface, potentially with them under a manager who is taking a huge step up from the levels he has been operating in. When you look at the Watford squad they should be fine going forward for now but whether they have the quality at the back remains to be seen.
Sheffield United
The Blades know they have already messed up one chance to get back to the Premier League and will be eager to get back there at the second time of asking. The first thing they need to overcome is the concern that teams tend to have a hangover when they lose in the play-offs. That is often even more the case when that team loses on penalties. It was a bad season to lose in the end of season showpiece because this season came along very fast so it will be interesting to see how prepared they are for this match.
Sheffield United looked much better the longer last season went on with Paul Heckingbottom clearly a better choice to lead them than Slavisa Jokanovic ever was. They probably don’t need to improve too much to be a major force this season but if they do show an improvement then they could be hard to stop. One other issue is the fallout from last season which is still hanging over them with charges to players and things like that.
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Team News
Watford have managed to keep hold of Ismaila Sarr and Emmanual Dennis and both could be involved here while Vakoun Bayo and Rey Manaj could be in line for debuts. Tom Cleverley is expected to play a big role.
Sheffield United manager Paul Heckingbottom will be without one of his new signings in Tommy Doyle for this one. He will also be without Jayden Bogle but looks to have a full squad aside from that for the trip to Hertfordshire.
Betting
When I look at these two teams I think the attacking units will outdo the defensive ones over time so I guess the question for this opening match is whether the combinations will be up to speed for this first game, particularly for these two sides. I say particularly for them because Sheffield United finished their season on May 17 while Watford played their final match of last term five days later so you would imagine they won’t have come back for pre-season until late June, maybe later for those who were on international duty.
We’ve already seen three sides whose season didn’t end until late draw a blank this weekend in Huddersfield Town, Luton Town and Norwich City and I certainly think there is something in that. Burnley were the other team who finished late and they only scored once so those teams are probably going to need a couple of weeks to get up to speed. I sense the same is going to be the case in this one so I think under 2.5 goals at 8/11 has plenty of life in it.
Tips
Back Under 2.5 goals for a 3/10 stake at 1.73 with BetVictor
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