Watford boss Roy Hodgson felt they deserved at least a point for their “effort, commitment, work-rate and desire" in a narrow 2-1 defeat to Brentford, which saw the Bees score a 95th-minute winner.
Brentford claimed all three points thanks to set-piece goals from Christian Nørgaard and Pontus Jansson, either side of Emmanuel Dennis' equalising strike.
The second-half display from the Hornets pleased Hodgson, but equally left him frustrated at the performance in the first 45 where Watford conceded 15 minutes into the game.
“Unfortunately you prepare the game and dream of the performance and visualise the performance but it's not what you get," said Hodgson.
“We needed every player from the first minute to be at the top of their game and that was by no means the case, but we did remedy in the second half some aspects of our performance and gave ourselves a chance. We equalised and could even have got that winner. It would have been nice to have done it from the first minute because then maybe we wouldn't have been behind at half-time.
“We conceded a very poor goal and that was very disappointing considering how much we built up the game in the week with the players and how much we believed that they recognised that this game needed to be built up, because it was one of the last chance games we're going to have.
“I thought in the second half we did more than well enough, we got ourselves back in and looked like we were going to be good value for a 1-1, so to lose it to a free-kick in the 95th minute was a harsh judgement on the team, especially after the crowd had been so good and got behind us so well."
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