Marco Silva: 'Watford not in normal image'

Watford boss Marco Silva has claimed that his team were 'not in their normal image' during Saturday afternoon's 1-0 home defeat to Stoke City in the Premier League.

Stoke skipper Darren Fletcher scored the only goal of the match as Watford lost their second successive league game, which has seen them drop into seventh position in the Premier League table.

The Hornets have earned plenty of plaudits during the 2017-18 campaign, but Silva has conceded that his side were off-colour in the defeat to the Potters.

"In the first half we gave 45 minutes to our opponents. [We were] too slow and not in our normal image," Silva told reporters.

"We gave one gift, the goal. In that moment we lost our focus and they scored a good goal. The second half was mostly our team, they played with 10 men behind the ball. It is normal when a team is in that position in the table.

"We created some chances to change the score, but didn't. We tried until the end. We needed to do something different and in the first half we didn't do that."

Next up for Watford in the Premier League is a trip to Everton next weekend.