My boys have the eyes of survivors
Pearson backing Hornets stars to keep him in job
NIGEL PEARSON is convinced Watford will survive in the Premier League race to the bottom – after looking into his players’ eyes and seeing “positive signals”.
Like the Hornets’ topflight status, Pearson’s future at Vicarage Road – which looked rock-solid before Project Restart – is less certain after collecting just five points from their past 10 matches.
His predecessors in the Hornets ducking stool – Quique Sanchez Flores, Javi Gracia, Marco Silva and Walter Mazzarri – were all jettisoned after similarly bleak runs.
And a home defeat by rock-bottom Norwich this evening would turn alarm bells into the full-blown, blaring klaxon of crisis.
Pearson led Watford out of the bottom three at Christmas with a superb run of 13 points in five games built on a unity of purpose.
But his team’s confidence has been drained by a single point since football emerged from hibernation – and his authority was undermined last month by striker Andre Gray’s birthday party that drove a coach and horses through lockdown rules. Stoically, Pearson stared down the barrel and insisted: “Players may question themselves confidence-wise. But I look at our players in training, you look into their eyes and get lots of positive signals back from them. We just have to back ourselves, keep calm but also we have to perform and find ways of winning games.
“If it’s ugly sometimes, I don’t care. It’s just about getting enough results.” Pearson rescued Leicester from the drop in 2015 by plundering seven wins and a draw from their last nine games. Asked if it would be his greatest achievement yet – and Watford needed snookers, seven points adrift of safety, when he arrived eight months ago – he replied: “Ask me that question in a few weeks’ time.
“We’re in a much better situation that we were last December.
“And even though our results haven’t been what we would like, for sure, we are working incredibly hard to keep ourselves very much in the game. And we are very much in the game.
“We recognise how important this game is. We are still in a very tough relegation battle, we’ve got to keep our nerve and win our own games. It is really that simple.
“Yes, we have found it difficult to pick up points but there is enough commitment and desire to put it right here, for us to come out of the other side.”
And he added: “Do we believe in ourselves? Do I believe we have good players? Yes – and the players are really keen to improve on our current form.”
Pearson will hand former England striker Danny Welbeck only his fifth start in 12 months since he hopped over the garden fence from Arsenal’s training ground next door on a free transfer.