Watford vs. Liverpool
Venue: Vicarage Road
Kick off: 3PM
Liverpool will be looking to extend their unbeaten start to the Premier League season to 13 matches when they take on Watford at Vicarage Road this afternoon.
The Reds have made their joint-best ever start to a Premier League campaign, but they come up against a Watford team that has also impressed so far in 2018-19.
Watford manager Javi Gracia is on the verge of becoming the first Watford boss to sign a contract extension since Malky Mackay in 2011.
Notoriously cut-throat owners have been suitably impressed by the Spaniard since his January appointment, and fresh terms are expected to be signed next week.
Before that, though, Gracia faces the challenge of picking up his 30th win from his 47th match in charge against a team yet to be beaten by anyone in the Premier League this season.
Watford will not be daunted by that prospect, having already ended Tottenham Hotspur’s 100 per cent start this season, although since that victory at the beginning of September the Hornets have only won two of their nine matches across all competitions.
Things have certainly taken a turn for the worse since they kept pace with Liverpool at the start of the campaign with four wins from their opening four games, and they welcome the Reds having only taken one point from back-to-back matches against struggling duo Newcastle United and Southampton before the international break.
Despite that dip in form, Watford remain seventh in the Premier League table, above the likes of Manchester United, Everton and Leicester City and only four points off the top five with almost a third of the season gone.
There are causes for caution, though; Watford were only one place and two points worse off at the same stage of last season, and it was around this point of the 2017-18 campaign when their form began to tail off – a run of just one win in 12 Premier League games ultimately spelling an end to Marco Silva’s reign and opening the door for Gracia.
The Hornets go into today’s match with five wins from their last seven Premier League home games – although it was only last month that they were beaten 4-0 by Bournemouth in front of their own fans.
Liverpool and Manchester City are the next two visitors to Vicarage Road – the most stringent tests the league has to offer at the moment – and Watford have lost 15 of their 17 Premier League games against teams that have begun the day in the top two.
There is the sense that this Watford side is capable of pulling off upsets, though, and doing so on Saturday would be the perfect preface to Gracia’s imminent new deal.
Watford possible XI: Foster, Femenia, Prodl, Cathcart, Holebas, Hughes, Doucoure, Chalobah, Pereyra, Deulofeu, Success.
Liverpool possible XI: Alisson, Alexander-Arnold, Gomez, Van Dijk, Robertson, Wijnaldum, Henderson, Milner, Salah, Firmino, Mane.