Nigel Pearson knows this week presents Watford with a big opportunity to pick up some important points that could be the difference between his side going down or staying up.

The Hornets have picked up just one point since the league resumed last month and last night's 3-0 defeat at the hands of Chelsea was a further set-back, leaving them still just one place and one point above the drop zone.

Tuesday evening sees Watford hosting bottom of the league Norwich City before the relatively safe Newcastle United visit Vicarage Road next weekend, while West Ham will follow them on the fixture list.

Pearson is under no illusion that next week will be important, but also knows it will be tougher than some are making it out to be.

"We know that next week is a big week for us for sure in terms of opportunity," he said.

"But we're also not naive enough to think that they're going to be easy games because everybody has something to play for in some way. Newcastle have had some impressive results of late - they don't have a great deal of, I suppose, pressure on them and that can free players up, so we can't go into any game with a mentality that it's going to be this or that, we have to concentrate very much on our own level of performance and commitment to our own cause. We need to keep our destiny in our own hands and we need to be responsible for our own performances and results and outside of that, elsewhere is elsewhere."

Despite losing 3-0, Pearson felt there were some positives to take from the game at Chelsea, specifically in his side's "commitment". 

While the results of teams around Watford could impact their season, he wants his players to remain focused on themselves.

"The most important thing for us is that we find levels of performance ourselves," he said. "The way that I measure our performances are against ourselves. I don't measure about other people, we have a much better chance of picking points up, winning games, if we show the commitment that we did tonight, the desire and the team work ethic that we did against any team.

"We've got to find ways of winning games from here and I think the important thing is that players don't fear the situation, don't fear the run in - we've got some very difficult games, every game in the Premier League is a tough game, believe me. What we have to do is make sure that we perform as well as we can and then we'll see whether we're good enough."