Huddersfield vs Watford prediction: ENGLAND: Championship betting tips on match 2022-12-16 15:00.
Huddersfield’s difficult schedule to round out the 2022 calendar year continues when Watford come to town a week after they lost away to another Championship promotion contender in Sheffield United (0-1). They’re now four points adrift at the bottom of the standings, which will be a worry despite manager Mark Fotheringham attempting to big his team up by stating they are “in mid-table form” and “a different animal now” to the one that opened the league season with six losses in eight games (W1, D1).
While it’s been a season to forget so far for Huddersfield, they have still proven a tricky opponent at times for many of the division’s top sides to overcome. They may have lost each of their previous five matches against teams inside the top six as of the end of the last gameweek, but all of those defeats were by a slender one-goal margin. Perhaps then there’ll be some confidence that they can go one better this time and secure a positive result that could be key in their bid to avoid featuring in England’s third tier again for the first time since 2011/12.
Watford were expected to return to Championship action by accounting for Hull City after firing in nine goals to give them four wins from their six league outings (D1, L1), but a second successive scoreless draw left manager Slaven Bilić feeling “gutted” albeit full of praise for a squad bereft of fit midfielders, something that forced him to drop striker João Pedro back into an unfamiliar central role.
They’ve lost further ground on runaway leaders Burnley and Sheffield United as a result and are entrenched in a top-half logjam that saw third and 13th separated by just six points going into the round. The visiting side should be confident of taking at least one point home though, after doing so in almost all away trips to bottom-half hosts this Championship season (W3, D4, L1).
Players to watch: In the absence of injured defender Yuta Nakayama, Jordan Rhodes remains the only player to score twice for Huddersfield at home this Championship season. Watford goalkeeper Daniel Bachmann has been a major part of their success, notching up the best clean sheet rate (38%) of any keeper to have faced at least 75 shots on target across the 2022/23 Championship.
Hot stat: Huddersfield and Watford have never played out a scoreless draw in more than 50 years of H2H history!