Marco Silva acknowledged Manchester City were deserving victors at Vicarage Road this afternoon, but he believed their first and third goals were offside and also took issue with referee Anthony Taylor for not awarding the Hornets a penalty after the break in their 6-0 defeat.

The Hornets head coach was not making excuses for the heavy defeat; he admitted they were the architects of their own downfall at times and need to learn lessons about staying constantly focused and organised against the top teams, but Silva did not feel his team did not get the rub of the green such as when Sergio Aguero and Gabriel Jesus netted City’s first and third goals.

Silva said: “It’s not a good afternoon for us but for me the match is easy to understand. First, City deserved the three points. They are strong enough to come here and to create a lot of problems for us to win the match. I need to analyse the first half but they started strongly. In the first minute they were causing problems, but we started to react a little bit.

“But when I need to analyse the first half, I analyse with the first goal being offside, the second goal we made a big mistake and created a chance for them to score and the third goal again is offside. This is the truth. They had more chances than us, but the first big chance to score is the header with Richarlison, but after they scored one goal with offside, the third goal is offside as well.”

Turning to the second half, Silva highlighted when Nathaniel Chalobah was taken out in the penalty area following a Hornets corner as another incident that didn’t fall in Watford’s favour, although he acknowledged it wouldn’t have affected the final outcome.

“Of course we spoke during the half time, I tried to get them to react, and the first ten minutes of the second half I think we reacted well and we had a clear penalty,” the Watford boss continued. “Of course the penalty doesn’t really change the score, I’m sure City would have won the match in the same way, but it gives more confidence if we score in this moment for the team to react, to do something a bit different in the second half.

“But after we start to lose our organisation in some moments, they scored more goals and one of them was a penalty and in that moment the referee saw it.”

Following their unbeaten start to the Premier League, it’s important Watford do not let one heavy defeat unduly affect their confidence going into next weekend’s trip to Swansea City. But Silva feels today presents a good opportunity for his players to learn.

He said: “We need to look at the match like we do the others. It’s a good match for our team to learn at this level when you play teams like City. When they’re in a good moment like they are they can really play a strong match. They changed only one player they played from Wednesday (the 4-0 Champions League win at Feyenoord), they respect our team and they came here to play a strong match. And when you play these type of teams you can concede goals like we conceded.

“To compete at this level we need to keep our focus and organisation every time, but we need to look forward. We lost only three points. We need to rest, to analyse, I repeat it is a good day for us to learn and to prepare for the next match.”