West Ham host Watford for this English Premier League round 24 clash at the Olympic Stadium in London early Wednesday morning Beijing time. It is easy for anyone following English football to say that the hosts are the favorites in this match but in my opinion they are even bigger favorites than the betting market and perhaps the football media believe.. Let's take a closer look..

In my opinion Watford are more like "a circus" than a serious football club.. They have changed manager almost constantly in recent years and have now hired a true legend Roy Hodgson, 74. I am not saying he is a bad manager but still do question his skills and energy to get results nowadays at this level, in the best football league on the planet. Most of my fans probably are aware of the fact that teams very often get a boost when a new manager steps in. However, as I just mentioned for Watford new manager is "too normal a thing" so I think the boost is very small.  I was very skeptical about Watford even before the season started and they have been just as "messy" and unreliable a team as I predicted.. The started the season pretty OK but have started to fade a way in recent monhts, as expected. I still rate them as the second worst team in the Premier League despite being in the 18th place. Newcastle, with several new good players will surely topple them during the rest of the season! They have failed to score in their latest two matches and their offensive play has been pretty horrible indeed recently. In their latest match they played a pretty low-level match.. It was a 0-0 draw against a bad team Burnley. Before that they played okay at home versus the worst team in the league, Norwich but still lost 0-3! A big humiliation. Their relatively weak defense will be tested by a tough opponent today and I think they would need a lot of luck to avoid defeat! Hodgson has a reputation as an expert in defensive tactics but I think he will needs more time and at the end of the end of the day offense is the bigger problem for Watford anyway..They have lost 8 of their latest 10 matches.

West Ham have played a better than expected season and I have raised their power rating that illustrates the teams' overall class as the season has progressed. They currently occupy the 5th place in the standings and whilst I think they will not be able to finish that high they difference in class compared to poor hosts is still substantial! They played a lazy match a few days ago versus a small team Kidderminster in FA Cup away from home and only managed to win in the extra time 2-1. They clearly underestimated the amateur-level opponents.. However, they did dominate the match. We all know smaller teams sometimes exceed their  normal level in FA Cup and sometimes even beat a lot bigger teams. For example Chelsea were also challenged by a small team, Plymouth, at home and had to come back from 0-1 to win 2-1 in the extra time.. I think the betting market has over-reacted to the poor match against Kidderminster. Before this match they lost 0-1 to ManU away from home after a quite balanced battle.

To sum up, West Ham are very big favorites here and even a clear win would not surprise me at all!