Quique Sanchez Flores' Watford travel to the Liberty Stadium on Monday night, where they will face an out-of-sorts Swansea City currently in the relegation zone. The Hornets are in a bad vein of form themselves, however, and this one promises to be an intriguing encounter that is also pretty tricky to call.
Hitting the ground running
Watford had an unbelievable first-half to the season on their return to the Premier League, exceeding the expectations of critics and journalists - the majority of whom expected the Hornets to swiftly return to the Sky Bet Championship. This culminated in a terrific December for Flores' side, as they swept aside Liverpool 3-0 and saw off the likes of Norwich City and Sunderland.
The result was a brace of awards given to manager Flores and star striker Odion Ighalo - who plundered six goals in December, continuing where he left off for the Hornets last season - for Manager of the Month and Player of the Month respectively.
A slip in form
Since just before and after the turn of the year, however, things have started to go a little downhill for Flores' side, as they slipped to late, disappointing defeats against Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City.
Things went from bad to worse for Watford as they were comfortably dispatched 2-0 by Ronald Koeman's Southampton side last weekend - a result which promoted the manager to apologise for his team's performance and confess that they had failed to reach their usual competitive level.
Despite that, Watford are still exceeding expectations, and a win against Swansea on Monday night could see them go above the likes of Liverpool, Everton and high-flying Crystal Palace in what promises to be a tight race for the European places.
Knowing their team are punching above their weight, the Watford fans will not be concerned with recent consecutive Premier League defeats, but with a perfectly winnable game against Swansea on the cards, they may be expecting to have something else to cheer about come Monday night.
Swansea in disarray
The main reason Flores and his players will fancy their chances, is the complete nightmare of a season that Alan Curtis' Swansea are having; struggling to pick up points and already a manager down for the campaign after firing Garry Monk in December of last year.
At the time, the decision made by the board felt like a sensible one: despite still having mostly the same squad, Swansea had fallen by the wayside and slipped completely out of form, particularly when you consider that last season they were battling amongst the European places.
Negotiation power
Now, however, Curtis' inexperience is showing, and Swansea have decided to wait until summer to bring in managerial reinforcements. The question now is, will they still be a Premier League team when the team to start looking comes around?
A turnaround in form suggests they're going to struggle, even though the battle to survive relegation promises to be a close one which a good run of form could easily see you jump out of. For the time being, however, Swansea sit inside the relegation zone - albeit with a game in hand - two points adrift of Newcastle United above them.
Even more concerning, is the fact that they come into this game off the back of a 4-2 defeat against fellow relegation strugglers Sunderland - games they should really be expecting to win.
There's no question about it: Flores' Watford will fancy their chances at the Liberty on Monday night; Ighalo and Troy Deeney will be champing at the bit to take on an anxious-looking Swansea defence, and the Swans will have to be at their best if they are to take all three points at the end of the 90 minutes.
