Davinson Sánchez breaks Watford’s resolve with 96th-minute Spurs winner

New year, new dawn? As it turned out, not quite. For a long time, it seemed that history might be made at Vicarage Road on Saturday – a first clean sheet for Claudio Ranieri as Watford manager, his first Premier League clean sheet for three years and three days. Watford have had five managers since they last kept a Premier League clean sheet and Davinson Sánchez’s injury-time winner means that number could soon increase to six.

Six points from 11 games since Ranieri took over is not an encouraging stat for Watford. For the Italian, pretty much all that can be said is that his win percentage is higher than it was during his disastrous stint in charge of Fulham – although anything but a win at Newcastle in a fortnight would change that. Ranieri lasted three months and two weeks at Fulham; he would have to survive beyond 18 January for his Watford reign to last longer.

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