Head coach Slaven Bilic said his players didn’t even get the basics right as they slumped to a 2-0 defeat at Middlesbrough.

Like those fans who witnessed the error-ridden shambles, particularly in the first half, Bilic was almost at a loss to explain how his players couldn’t manage to string passes together.

“I’m angry. It was simply not good enough,” he said.

“I was excited before the game because of the way we’d prepared and we’d taken seven points from our last three games.

“We had new players, players coming back, we had pace in attack, we knew we could stretch them and we knew what they would do.

“But there’s no point in talking about all the things we could do if we do the basic things as badly as we did today.”

As much as Middlesbrough put Watford under pressure, the Hornets shot themselves in the foot time after time with some truly dreadful mistakes.

“How many times did we pass the ball to them? How many times did players just slip over? It’s impossible to do anything or get anything out of a game when you do that,” shrugged  Bilic.

“And then we concede a goal like the first one. There is no other word for that than sloppy.

“In tennis they talk about unforced errors. Today we made so many of them. If you give the ball away ten times, and you keep slipping over, then the confidence drains.

“I’m not talking about extra qualities or things you need to do in order to score goals and win games at this level. I’m talking basics.

“When we got the ball and used it in the first half we stretched them, but you cannot give the ball away as many times as we did.

“We didn’t make simple passes, we were sloppy, we weren’t focussed enough.”