Pick of the stats: Oxford United v Watford

[BBC] Oxford United will seek an exit from the bottom three as they welcome Watford on Saturday (15:00 BST). The U's are on a four-match winless streak but are only one point below 21st-placed Portsmouth and could leapfrog both Leicester City and Pompey to reach safety should they pick up a better result. They face a Hornets side on a three-match winless run of their own, with a nine point-gap to the play-offs.

Oxford have won just three of their last 26 league games against Watford (D11 L12), though one of those was in this exact fixture last season (1-0). Watford lost this exact fixture 1-0 last season, having been unbeaten in their previous 12 league visits to Oxford between 1972 and 1999 (W4 D8). Oxford have the lowest average possession (39.

7%), have completed the fewest passes (8,870), had the fewest sequences of 10 or more passes in open play (128), average the fewest passes per sequence (2. 3) and have the shortest sequence time (5. 6 seconds) in the Championship this season.

Since Ed Still's first game in charge of Watford on Valentine's Day, only Middlesbrough (211) and Portsmouth (165) have had more shots in the Championship than the Hornets (151), though 44% of them have come from outside the box (67), the third-highest ratio of any side in that time. Since the start of February, only Hayden Hackney (28) has created more chances in the Championship than Watford's Giorgi Chakvetadze (25). He created nine open play chances last time out against Charlton, only the third player on record (2013-14 onwards) to do so in a Championship game: the others are Pablo Hernández for Leeds vs Bolton in February 2019 (10) and Finn Azaz for Plymouth vs Watford in January 2024 (9).