Slavisa Jokanovic says Watford paid an expensive price for not matching Birmingham City’s determination in their 2-1 defeat to the Blues and admits his side are not defending long balls into their penalty area well enough.

Clayton Donaldson struck twice to cancel out Fernando Forestieri’s first half equaliser and earn the hosts just their second home league win since October 1, 2013. 

Both of the Blues goals came from crosses into the Watford penalty area. Donaldson had a half volley deflected in for his first of the evening before powerfully heading home his second late into the contest.

Jokanovic felt the Hornets made too many mistakes in the closing stages of the contest and added: “At the end of the game we suffered a lot with the long ball - we must improve this part of our game.

“My team is not the physically strongest in the Championship and we must find a way of dealing with the direct game and long balls (into the box).

“We have suffered with that today and in many games before. This is our situation and we need to find a solution to this problem.”

The Hornets head coach continued: “I don’t know if it was the mentality of my players or if they thought it would be an easy day for us. Nothing is easy, especially in this league.

“Birmingham played with a high level of determination and we didn’t have the same level. We paid a very expensive price for that and lost the game.”

Jokanovic made five changes to the Watford starting XI which defeated Millwall at the weekend.

Top scorer Matej Vydra, Keith Andrews and Daniel Pudil dropped to the bench while Gianni Munari and Sebastien Bassong missed out through injury.

In came Lewis McGugan, Ikechi Anya, Lloyd Doyley, Tommie Hoban and Forestieri.

Jokanovic says he was obligated to make at least two changes because of injuries but didn’t believe his rotation was why Watford struggled at St Andrews.

He said: “No, that (the rotation) is not an excuse. We made some changes to the side, some were enforced because I had some injured players.

“Fernando didn’t start the last game but started today and scored. So I don’t believe my team were tired.

“Birmingham played with the same 11 players as on Saturday and they were not tired in the game.

“I was obligated to make changes for Bassong and Munari. They weren’t available for the game.

“The only change I made to rest someone was Pudil because he has played many games this season. It was only one change to rest a player. The others were because I was obligated to.”

He added: “I decided to play with Fernando and use Vydra in the last minutes of the game. You can ask me when we lose if my decisions were good or not. But they are my decisions and I believed before the game that it was the best way for us to win the match.”

Watford are the second highest scorers in the Championship but weren't able to create many clear chances against a resilient Birmingham defence.

Jokanovic accepted his side's passing lacked tempo and says the Hornets struggled to contain the Blues’ counter attacks.

He explained: “I’m not surprised with how Birmingham played, it was a similar structure to how they played against Wolves.

“They were compact and then waited for a chance. I believed we would find more space and be more dangerous but we made some wrong decisions and we didn’t pass between the lines. We didn’t create many chances.

“We arrived here like a top team and I am sure Birmingham’s determination would be at a high level. I said to my players that our attention must be the same level or higher than Birmingham.

“But we did things very slowly and passed slower than we should have in the opposition’s half." 

Click here to read a match report of tonight's defeat. Blues manager Gary Rowett's views can be found here.