Relegation can sometimes allow clubs to play with the shackles off, so some improvement may come from Watford in the closing weeks of the season, but right now they are still in the limbo of knowing that they are effectively down, without the mathematical confirmation.
That is likely to come this weekend, and with Hodgson also departing, there is a danger that the Hornets could give up on this season and begin to focus on life back in the Championship.
Palace, meanwhile, still have goals for the campaign and so we are predicting them to pick up a relatively comfortable win this weekend.
Data Analysis
Our analysis of all available data, including recent performances and player stats, suggests the most likely outcome of this match is a Crystal Palace win with a probability of 60.94%. A draw has a probability of 22.4% and a win for Watford has a probability of 16.63%.
The most likely scoreline is Crystal Palace 1-0 Watford with a probability of 12.77% and the second most likely scoreline is Crystal Palace 2-0 Watford with a probability of 11.67%.
Our analysis of all available data, including recent performances and player stats up until an hour before kickoff, suggested the most likely outcome of this match was a Crystal Palace win with a probability of 60.94%. A draw had a probability of 22.4% and a win for Watford had a probability of 16.63%.
The most likely scoreline for a Crystal Palace win was 1-0 with a probability of 12.77%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 2-0 (11.67%) and 2-1 (9.73%). The likeliest drawn scoreline was 1-1 (10.63%), while for a Watford win it was 0-1 (5.82%). The actual scoreline of 1-0 was predicted with a 12.8% likelihood. Our data analysis correctly predicted a 1-0 win for Crystal Palace in this match and our team at Sports Mole correctly predicted the win for Crystal Palace.