Marco Silva felt Watford made their task of getting a result at Manchester City an 'impossible' one by falling two goals behind inside 13 minutes.

Silva said he had warned his players of having to deal with the hosts' intensity but they capitulated inside 39 seconds to allow Raheem Sterling a sitter he could not miss.

City overran Watford at ease early on and doubled their lead 13 minutes in, when Christian Kabasele's clearance snuck in at the far post with Sergio Aguero ready to pounce.

Silva said: "To come here, compete and get a good result is impossible when you start like we did.

"We didn’t have enough defensive organisation. It was too easy for them.

"In the first 20 minutes we were too slow and didn't have enough urgency. We knew they would push our team back and put us under pressure.

"But you need to work in a different way; we didn’t block them out, and even in the first minute at this level you can’t do what we did.

"You must do things differently. When Sane crosses, we had three players against one and they still scored. But I don’t want to put anything down to specific players.

"We knew what they would try to do and from a set piece the second one came, when we needed to keep our focus."

Watford were particularly overloaded out wide as City carved them open time and time again, but improved before the break and could have pulled a goal back long before Andre Gray's 81st-minute consolation, by which time Aguero had put the game beyond doubt.

Silva said: "We still had two clear chances, Andre [Gray] with Ederson at 1-0, and another at 2-0. I think at that moment it would give us more belief, and in the second half it was a bit different.

"The game didn’t have the same pace or intensity, and they had a goal which I think was offside.

"When we made it 3-1 we had more belief and we had what should have been a penalty on [Roberto] Pereyra which could have made it 3-2. But City deserved the win overall.

"I don’t want to talk about individual players, but I think if we had all our players available, even with the problems we have in our squad, we could play better and do better as well.

"We have some important players injured - Kiko [Femenia], but also [Miguel] Britos and [Younes] Kaboul are normally in the starting 11, as well as [Nathaniel] Chalobah and Troy [Deeney]."