Javi Gracia is a rare recent Watford manager who starts a new campaign having ended the last one, but his side lack firepower and have failed to win away since last November

Guardian writers’ predicted position: 18th (NB: this is not necessarily Simon Burnton’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)

Last season’s position: 14th

Odds to win the league (via Oddschecker): 750-1

For the third time in four seasons, bookmakers and the Guardian’s football writers are united in the belief Watford will be relegated. Despite never being seriously threatened by demotion at any point since they returned to the top flight in 2015, neutrals have never been convinced that the club’s manager-munching model looks like an appropriate blueprint for long-term survival. Sooner or later, of course, they are likely to be right, and on the eve of their fourth successive top-flight campaign there are reasonable grounds for concluding that this will be the year they finally fail to confound the naysayers.

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If there is momentum to be carried forward from the end of last season, it is very much of the downwards variety. That campaign ended with a run of one win and six defeats in nine matches, safety having been effectively secured with equally unconvincing back-to-back 1-0 home victories over Everton and West Bromwich Albion in late February and early March. Meanwhile Watford scored two goals in their last 12 away matches, with no goals and only one point on their travels after 2 January.

There was mitigation for much of this, most convincingly an appalling injury record that led to the recruitment of a new medical director in January to, in the words of the club’s chairman, Scott Duxbury, “get us back to where we should be in terms of player care and treatment”. They are not there yet: Abdoulaye Doucouré, Gerard Deulofeu, Nathaniel Chalobah and Tom Cleverley, first-teamers all, have managed not a single minute of pre-season action between them, though all but the last may declare themselves fit for Saturday’s season-opening fixture against Brighton.

This negates some of the benefit of having a squad entirely unaffected by the World Cup. But an unbeaten pre-season in which the majority of the players have been fully involved – all six of the incoming transfers so far announced were completed by 5 July – and overseen for the first time in five years of near-constant managerial churn by the same coach who ended the last campaign in charge, promises some benefits.

The squad is overstuffed with underwhelming and/or unreliable defenders – the likes of Brice Dja Djédjé, yet to make his league debut two years after signing, and the perma-crocked Younès Kaboul – but in Craig Cathcart and the excellent Christian Kabasele the defence has a reliable and experienced core, with reasonable if ageing reserves augmented by Ben Wilmot, an 18-year-old recruit from Stevenage.

Adam Masina, who has arrived from Bologna, is expected to displace the referee-troubling Greek full-back José Holebas while the competition between Daryl Janmaat and Kiko Femenía for the right-back position has been complicated by the arrival of the versatile Marc Navarro from Espanyol. Ben Foster has usurped Heurelho Gomes as first-choice goalkeeper, with the Brazilian now likely to depart, while the highly-rated 19-year-old Swede Pontus Dahlberg is being groomed to take his place. Assuming the injury record can be improved and the club can rid themselves of some of the chaff, this is all reasonably encouraging.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Javi Gracia may be facing a relegation battle in his first full season in charge at Vicarage Road. Photograph: Paul Childs/Reuters

Despite the loss of Richarlison to Everton, Watford’s midfield is both more solid and more creative than at any time in its recent history, with Deulofeu and another new arrival, Ken Sema, adding options in wide positions. Doucouré’s presence will be particularly celebrated: there was an assumption that he would move to a bigger club this summer, but despite his consistently excellent performances last season nobody came close to matching his asking price and he finally committed to a new five-year contract.

“I agreed to stay because I can reach more objectives with Watford,” he said. “The club has the same ambition as me. We can reach another level. Maybe we can reach the Europa League or the top 10 of the league. That’s why I chose to stay.”

Though results were poor Roberto Pereyra and Étienne Capoue ended last season in exceptional form, and if they can reach similar levels Watford have an outstanding midfield capable of driving Doucouré, last season’s top-scorer with seven in the league, towards his lofty goals. But like so many of the team’s attacks, a positive analysis of the squad falters when it reaches the forwards.

Having preferred a single striker for most of his time in England, Javi Gracia has favoured a partnership in pre-season. In his final friendly, against Sampdoria, Troy Deeney, who appears to be approaching this campaign with improved fitness and focus, and Andre Gray, who has had an unusually prolific summer, played together. Last season Deeney started 20 games and scored only twice from open play, also converting three out of five penalties, while Gray’s 16 starts yielded five goals. One offered reasonable technique but little speed, the other a little speed but poor technique, and both suffered in isolation.

This is where the trouble lies. Deeney has made a magnificent contribution to Watford’s recent successes but his impact has faded the longer he has spent in the Premier League, from a combined total of 20 goals and assists in 2015-16 to 14 the following year and seven last season, while Gray has not been able to recreate his free-scoring lower-division exploits. Even if Gracia believes the pair are capable of providing the goals the team will need to flourish, they require capable alternatives should injury strike or form falter. As it stands they have the unreliable Stefano Okaka and Adalberto Peñaranda, the latter a fine prospect who blotted his copybook when falling out with Málaga last season because of an apparent belief that training was optional.

The Venezuelan is only 21 and may be re-energised by this new challenge but in his last two seasons, both spent at Málaga, he has started 12 games and not scored. Frustratingly Watford have for over a year owned a decent solution to their problem, in the shape of the exciting young Colombian Cucho Hernández, but he remains on loan at Huesca until he earns either a work permit or gets a European passport.

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The abundance of resources in other areas makes the fragility of their forward line all the more striking. If over the final hours of the transfer window they manage to secure the kind of player who can be relied upon both to contribute to build-up play and icily convert any chance the likes of Deulofeu, Pereyra and Will Hughes manage to conjure, Watford should be confident of defying their critics once again. But with no such signing their prospects dim alarmingly, and perhaps fatally.