Watford v Crystal Palace: Holloway's men to draw Hornets sting
Andy Tongue thinks a stalemate is the most likely outcome in a tasty looking televised Championship clash...
Watford v Crystal Palace
Friday 8th February - 19:45 GMT
Live on Sky Sports One
Friday night football comes to Vicarage Road and a tantalising clash is in prospect as the fourth-placed Hornets entertain Crystal Palace, who sit just one place and one point below them.
Gianfranco Zola's men have been in fine form lately. Their only two defeats came unexpectedly at home to Charlton and away to Bristol City but the common theme on each occasion was the Italian making wholesale changes to his line-up as he sought to rest some of his talented young players. At Ashton Gate he even left Mitej Vydra, currently the hottest striker outside the Premier League, on the bench. We can expect Vydra, who scored his 19th goal of the season and seventh in the last five games in Saturday's 2-1 win at home to Bolton, to start at home to Palace.
There is a suspicion that the Hornets are better away from Vicarage Road where their fluid passing style makes them devastatingly effective on the counter-attack but with on-loan Chelsea star Nathianel Chalobah pulling the strings in midfield and Troy Deeney providing an alternative second attacking threat to Vydra, they must fancy their chances of promotion come May.
The Eagles are still flying high but they look to have been running out of steam a little in recent weeks. Wilfried Zaha has lacked the sparkle and zest of the early months of the season and must surely have half an eye on Old Trafford and next year despite assurances he is fully focused on the job at hand.
Ian Holloway's men were decidedly second-best for much of the game at home to local rivals Charlton last week but once again it was Glenn Murray who dug them out of a hole with two goals in five minutes late in the game to earn three priceless points. Goalkeeper Julian Speroni had earlier shown his worth with a string of top-class stops from the visitors.
Watford are on something of a roll at the moment and their price of 2.12 for victory will no doubt tempt a fair few punters but I suspect that they may not have it all own their way. Palace have proved in recent weeks that they can grind out results when not necessarily playing at their best and a point apiece looks a likely outcome here. The draw can be backed at 3.65 and that's where my money is going.
With the division's two top scorers on display in Vydra and Murray, we should expect an entertaining game and a small play on 2-2 is advised in the correct score market.
Recommended Bets
Best Bet: Back the draw at 3.65
Back 2-2 in the correct score market at 15.0
Bet HERE
Viewed 446 times
Keywords: Watford, Crystal Palace, Holloway
Source: Betfair
Comments and Feedback
There are no comments yet. Be the first to comment this article!
Register or log in to submit your comment.
167 guests, 0 users are online right now.