This is Leicestershire --After the way *Leicester City's* promotion campaign ended last season at Watford, there was the fear that the psychological impact would affect their promotion push this term.
But it has proved to be quite the opposite. City have used the memory of that defeat at Vicarage Road as motivation to carve out a 10-point lead at the top of the Championship, while it has been a different story for the victors on that day.
Gianfranco Zola's men suffered defeat in the play-off final at Wembley against Crystal Palace, courtesy of Kevin Phillips, who will be on City's substitutes' bench today, and Watford have struggled to recover.
Watford started the season well with some big wins over Bournemouth and Barnsley but, when Zola stood down in December, they were 13th in the league, had not won since October and had lost their last five home games.
Fellow Italian Beppe Sannino stepped in but Watford have still struggled, and their win over Brighton last week was only their third in 19 games in all competitions.
"Possibly their ultimate disappointment had a greater psychological effect on their group of players than it did on ours," said Pearson. "It is never easy to recover from.
"Gianfranco is a good friend of mine and I was disappointed for him. I thought last season they were fabulous. They played a good brand of football.
"I think you have to remember they came out of the pack and had a good run through the middle of the season.
"They had a few unknown quantities last season. They had a lot of new players who there wouldn't be a lot of information about.
"They had some very good loan players who they have lost this year."
However, Pearson believes Watford remain a potent threat and, when City beat them 3-0 at Vicarage Road in November, he was still impressed by the Hornets.
"I never like to see a manager who has done such a good job, and he is a top fella is Gianfranco, lose his job, but they have appointed someone they think is the right person to take them on," he added.
"They play at a high tempo. They probably have a more difficult-to-beat mentality, so we have to be prepared for a tough game. They still have the capacity to get a number of good results this season." Reported by This is 19 hours ago.