Coventry City go to Watford on Saturday with the Championship title already wrapped up and a first league double over the Hornets in 21 years within reach. They beat Watford 3-1 in the reverse fixture in October, and now return to Vicarage Road after clinching promotion on April 17 and the title with a 5-1 win over Portsmouth.
For Coventry, the visit is about finishing cleanly. Their 3-1 home win over Wrexham last Sunday took them to 92 points from 45 matches, with 93 goals making them the division's highest scorers. That is the form of a side that has not just gone up, but done it with force, and another victory would give them a 28th league win and complete the club's first league double over Watford since November 2020.
Watford, by contrast, are limping toward the finish in 16th place and have won just three of Ed Still's 14 games in charge. They are winless in seven matches, have lost their past four, and were beaten 3-0 away to West Bromwich Albion before a 5-1 loss at Middlesbrough in their last away game. Still was appointed in February on a 2.5-year deal when Watford were 12th and only three points adrift from the playoffs; since then, they have slid further from that target and are now 13 points away from the top six.
The selection picture at Vicarage Road is not clean either. Watford will be without Hector Kyprianou, Rocco Vata and Stephen Mfuni, while Othmane Maama and Nestory Irankunda are options to start and Mamadou Doumbia could also come into the lineup. For Coventry, the challenge is simpler: keep the momentum of a season that has already carried them back to the Premier League and into the Championship record books by scoring 93 goals.
The bigger question is no longer whether Coventry are ready for the top flight. It is whether Watford can avoid ending another drifting season with the kind of performance that only sharpens the case for change this summer, with Still expected to depart and the club already staring at another rebuild.
