Sheffield United: How a League One club is helping boss prepare for Watford
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Although Paul Heckingbottom concedes Edwards will adjust his tactics after taking charge at Vicarage Road, particularly with players such as Ismaila Sarr and Emmanuel Dennis at his disposal, coaching staff believe analysing Rovers’ system could provide some clues about the strategy their opponents could adopt.
Edwards led his previous employers to promotion from League Two before being unveiled as Roy Hodgson’s successor, and Heckingbottom said: “In terms of looking at Watford, we’ll be going off their pre-season games and also their personnel.
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Hide Ad“Some people might say the fact that Rob has just come in makes planning a bit more difficult. I appreciate where they’re coming from, but there’s things you can do.”
“We’ll also be looking at Forest Green, and what happened down there,” he added. “Okay, they might have a little bit more on us than we do on them. But we’ve still done a lot of work on Watford and we think we know how they’ll go about things and how they’ll look to go into the game against us.”
Like United, Watford have returned a mixed set of results during pre-season. Having lost to Cambridge, Edwards’ side then drew with Panathinaikos before being beaten by Bolton Wanderers.
They then beat Wycombe Wanderers before completing their preparations with a stalemate against Southampton.
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Hide AdUnited beat Casa Pia, Lincoln City and Burton Albion but also lost to Scunthorpe, Mansfield Town and Barnsley. However, both Edwards and Heckingbottom will be encouraged by a recent statistical study which revealed there is effectively no correlation (r=0.12) between how a team performs in its summer friendlies and the opening stages of a campaign proper. The relationship is even weaker (r=0.10) between pre-season results and average points during the opening 10 matches.
“I think this is probably one of the toughest starts we could get - a team that’s just come down and away from home,” said Heckingbottom. “Watford, almost certainly, will look to attack us when you look at the personnel they’ve got. It will be a good gauge of where we are.”