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It was a frustrating night for the Blues hosting Man United at the weekend, being held to a 1-1 draw despite having 24 shots to their visitors’ three, though they still sit top of the table by a single point over Man City, with Liverpool just a point further back.
Watford played out another high scoring encounter as they succumbed to a 4-2 defeat away to Leicester on Sunday, and will need to put that result behind them when they take on the league leaders on Tuesday.
While during Ranieri’s title charge at Leicester, they were renowned for narrow, low-scoring victories, during his six games in charge of Watford so far he’s overseen an average of 4.17 goals per game, which is even more remarkable considering there were two 1-0 results in that time.
The London club remain the only unbeaten away side in the league this year, and have picked up three more points (16) on the road than the next best team, Liverpool (13), which doesn’t bode well for Watford here who are still looking for their first clean sheet of the season.
The front three of Hakim Ziyech, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Timo Werner didn’t seem to work for output, though with the array of attacking talent the Blues have,and the return of Romelu Lukaku, it would be a shock to see them draw a blank here.
Chelsea/Chelsea - HT/FT
The big question here though is whether or not Chelsea will keep a clean sheet. Their only goal conceded on the road so far came from the penalty spot at Anfield, with all of their other five such games returning win-to-nil bets, including over Arsenal, Spurs and Leicester.
In fact, that Mo Salah penalty on the stroke of half-time is the only first half goal Chelsea have conceded this season, while if the league was decided exclusively on first half results, Watford would be rock bottom of the table, leaving the half-time/full-time result looking like a good betting prospect alongside the win-to-nil.
We wouldn’t be overly confident on the latter though, with Watford’s attacking threat increasing drastically under current management.
Indeed, having averaged a goal a game before Ranieri came to the helm, they’ve increased that to 1.83 with the likes of Josh King and Emmanuel Dennis stepping it up a notch.
Ismailla Sarr will be a big loss for them going forward, though they’ve managed to at least score in five of the last six league matches he’s missed going back into last season, while they’ve scored exactly twice in both games he’s failed to start this year, so we’ll ignore the win-to-nil bet.
PREDICTION:
CHELSEA/CHELSEA - HT/FT
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