Relegation tends to leave a bitter taste in the mouth of a professional footballer and one which often proves difficult to cleanse.

It is an experience Daryl Janmaat has been unfortunate enough to experience as part of the Newcastle side which fell out of the top flight in 2016.

He has since helped Watford avoid the drop last season and looks set to do the same this with the Hornets sitting nine points clear of the bottom three.

Going down with a club with the passionate fan base Newcastle boasts adds extra weight to the burden of failure, and Janmaat is eager for Watford to finish their survival mission and avoid a similar fate.

“Nobody wants to get relegated and I had it once. Nobody is thinking about it and we want to look up and not down,” Janmaat said.

“It is not nice of course, especially with Newcastle which is a really big club and nobody expected that. That is the Premier League at the moment.”

Watford took two huge strides towards staying up with respective 1-0 wins over Everton and West Bromwich Albion in their last two games to climb to ninth.

The Dutch international says the mood in the Watford camp is a positive one and believes they will continue to show their Premier League class for the remainder of the season.

“We are really happy. They were two big wins and we are now looking forward to playing Arsenal,” he said.

“It gives me a lot of confidence and we are in a good stage now. Everybody can be positive and we have nine games left that if we do not do well in, we do not deserve to stay up.”

This season’s fight to stay up has been one of the tightest the Premier League has seen since its inception in 1992.

The situation at the bottom has cleared somewhat in recent weeks with sides putting daylight between themselves and the bottom three, but more than 10 sides can still go down.

Janmaat says the wrestle to stay up is indicative of the ever-increasing competitiveness of the Premier League.

“Every year is going to be really hard for every Premier League team. You have to prove yourself every year and it is not easy,” he said.

“You have the top six teams who will never go down, but from the start of the season you have 12 teams who could get relegated.

“You see now a big team could go down so every year is going to be a battle and you have to deserve your place in the Premier League.”