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West Ham make the short trip to Hertfordshire to face Watford this afternoon in what is a very important game. After an exciting and promising 4-1 thrashing of Southampton in the cup on Tuesday, there is a lot of new hope around the club about this season. Nuno and the team need to take advantage of this, or this newfound feel-good factor could disappear just as quickly as it arrived. When the Hammers were relegated, you could’ve easily been mistaken in thinking Watford were one of the top sides, one of the favourites for promotion, but that really isn’t the case. They finished 16th last season, 14th the year before that, and 15th the year before that. In fact, their highest finish in the Championship since being relegated from the Premier League four seasons ago was 11th. They are far from a great side, and they’ve lost some of their best players this summer in Nestory Irankunda, Moussa Sissoko, and, just yesterday, their former club captain and talisman Imran Louza. Although it’s away, it’s at a stadium we’ve played at a lot; it was one of the least intimidating grounds in the Premier League, let alone in the Championship, with a much worse team. They now have one of the worst squads in the second tier. If Nuno can’t get all three points in this game, some serious discussions are going to have to start. This game is massive for the former Nottingham Forest boss. Win, and he’ll have the backing of the majority of fans after winning back-to-back games; lose, and the majority of the fanbase are going to start wanting him replaced, and those in the boardroom that didn’t want him to stay in the first place. This really is a must-win for the Portuguese manager.