Despite remaining out of trouble all season Watford finished just above the drop zone after losing all of their last five games. The summer was a busy period for the Hornets as coach Mazzarri brought in lots of new players and at least the first few months of the season hinted that Watford might be one of the surprise packages. Capoue was particularly impressive in these early games and the generally solid holding midfielder got on the scoresheet in four of the opening five rounds.
Watford earned four wins and three draws in the opening ten rounds and despite their early exit from the League Cup come the end of October the Hornets were sitting in a solid top ten position. The problems started in the winter though as Watford won just two of their next twelve games, registering seven defeats in ten around the festive period. This poor run of results started when the main playmaker Pereyra sustained a bad knee injury in early December and with him ruled out for the rest of the campaign the forward action suffered big time.
The fact that captain Deeney was also in poor form and scored just 3 goals in the opening 21 matches also hardly helped. All that said a run of back-to-back draws followed by back-to-back wins in January pretty much cemented their mid-table position and Watford played without much pressure after that.
The safety was officially secured around Easter when three wins in four helped Mazzarri’s men to reach the magical 40 points and return to the top ten. Unfortunately late in the season luck wasn’t with the Hornets and after being hit by a series of injuries to centre-backs, for the final round they had five defenders missing, Watford lost all of their remaining matches and ended the campaign just above the drop zone, despite the fact that their safety was secured as early as round 33.
