West Ham vs Watford Predictions & Betting Tips, Match Previews

West Ham enjoyed a terrific season for the most part last year. Dimitri Payet was an absolute godsend for them and they pulled off a number of excellent away victories at top teams, which helped to keep them in the hunt for an unlikely top four spot until the very end of the season.

They did fall apart towards the end of the campaign though and ended up finishing in 7th position, still only four points off the top four. However, they don’t seem to have recovered from that end of season slump and haven’t started this term at all well.

They began in the Europa League qualifiers in July, beating Domzale on aggregate to set up a playoff match against the team that knocked them out at the same stage last season: Astra. A Premier League opener against Chelsea resulted in a 2-1 defeat and was followed by a 1-1 draw at Astra in the Europa League. They got off the mark with a struggle 1-0 win against Bournemouth,which required a late winner, but then lost 1-0 to Astra at their new stadium to be dumped out of the Europa League again.  Before the international break they faced off against Manchester City and came out deserved 3-1 losers.

This certainly isn’t the best of starts to life this season, and so far their new Olympic Stadium hasn’t been particularly kind to them. It wasn’t a convincing victory against Bournemouth and they followed it with a dismal defeat to Astra.

Watford haven’t exactly made the best start to life this season either. They began life without the absurdly sacked Quique Sanchez Flores with a 1-1 draw at Southampton, although in truth they deserved to lose that opener. A 2-1 loss to Chelsea followed, and then an extra time defeat to Gillingham dumped them out of the League Cup. Last time round they lost 3-1 to Arsenal after a shocking first half display, and it looks extremely unlikely that they will be able to build on the success of last season this time around.

Despite their poor starts to the season neither team made any significant moves at the end of the transfer window, with the only major move being Enner Valencia going to Everton to leave West Ham with a striker less.

West Ham will feel that they have a great chance of getting their season going on Saturday. Watford have started the season in worse shape than them and have lost eight of their last 11 away days in the Premier League. This makes odds of 4/5 for a West Ham win look decent value for money, and I’m going for a 2-0 correct score prediction at 8/1 as well.