Southampton's Mauricio Pellegrino and Watford's Marco Silva set to collide in the line of fire as crisis looms for both

Both managers are desperate for a win to arrest their respective slumps when Southampton face Watford at Vicarage Road on Saturday in an age when a crisis is just around the corner

Marco Silva and Mauricio Pellegrino are two managers under scrutiny (Getty)

The first managerial sacking of the season seems a long time ago now, a fuzzy image of chaos at Crystal Palace, Frank de Boer’s furrowed brow watching intently as Wayne Hennessey and Joel Ward attempt a one-two in their own box.

De Boer lasted four league matches, and his demise prompted Leicester’s Craig Shakespeare to say that top-flight managers are always four games from a crisis. As if the point needed proving, four games after De Boer’s exit Shakespeare went too.

The two teams at the foot of the Premier League’s form-table meet on Saturday when Southampton face Watford at Vicarage Road. Over their last six games they have won a combined five points from a possible 36; viewed through football’s narrow lens, Mauricio Pellegrino and Marco Silva must both be considered in the line of fire right now, and Saturday’s squabble will likely see one or the other pushed into further trouble.

The situation is particularly perilous for Pellegrino, partly due to Watford’s early-season excellence, as well as Silva’s commitment to energised attacking football, two factors which have put plenty of credit in the bank and which cannot be said of his counterpart’s defensively calibrated team.

It is also down to the context around the Argentine’s tenure. Southampton acted as a springboard for his predecessors Mauricio Pochettino and Ronald Koeman, and those successes now provide stark contrast to the club’s current plight. The same can be said of comparisons with his immediate predecessor, Claude Puel, who has reenergised Leicester after Shakespeare’s sacking; Saints’ eighth-place finish under Puel last season now seems unachievable.

Instead Pellegrino is in a relegation battle, a key player has departed for Liverpool and his stock is diminishing. Even in Southampton’s FA Cup victory over Fulham, he was booed by Saints supporters over a substitution and greeted with refrains of “You don’t know what you’re doing”.

Years of talent poaching have finally taken their toll at St Mary’s and there is a case for investment in just about every department, bar left-back. Pellegrino does have money to spend following the sale of Virgil van Dijk, but the combination of a well-publicised injection of funds, a struggling team and a notoriously challenging mid-season market are not conducive to bargain hunting – especially when you are trying to persuade players to join a relegation fight.

Claude Puel has impressed in his short time at Leicester (Getty)

“We have got a couple of targets,” Pellegrino said on Thursday. “The priority is to try to help especially in the final third. Charlie [Austin] will be out [for two months] and we don’t have this profile in this squad.

“Every single day we talk about how the market is working and how the club is looking to bring people not just for this five months, but obviously we want to bring people who are committed to our process to make the club better.

“But the market is really difficult. It’s about negotiation. We can control our side but we cannot control the other people.”

Watford have their own problems, predominantly around a raft of medium-term injuries. On Thursday the club’s technical director, Filippo Giraldi, said they would try to resist dipping into what he called the ‘emergency market’. Instead he will trust Silva to reverse the club’s downturn, a lull which seemed to coincide with speculation linking the Portuguese with a move to Goodison Park.

Watford remain 10th in the league but they have been standing still for weeks and are now only five points above the bottom three. Silva’s reputation has grown immeasurably since the relatively unknown Portuguese arrived at Hull a year ago to howls of horror from Sky Sports’ Paul Merson and Phil Thompson, who said a Premier League job was like “manna from heaven” for a man with Silva’s CV.

He has made those comments look pretty foolish but he will also know that the Pozzo family will not hesitate to step in. They are already on to their ninth manager in a five-year spell at the club and there is no sign that Silva will be given more leeway than the rest.

It is surely in the opposite dugout, however, where the most pressure will be felt when the form-table’s bottom clubs meet on Saturday. “The biggest risk in football is to work in football,” Pellegrino said. “The result is everything.” That notion feels apt as he and Silva aim to avoid becoming the next Premier League crisis.