Nigel Pearson felt Watford's late defeat at Aston Villa was harsh on the Hornets, after they had taken the lead in the first-half.

A Douglas Luiz equaliser was followed up by a late Tyrone Mings goal that gave the hosts all three points and plunged Watford back into the relegation zone.

However, Pearson felt that his side were unfortunate with the result.

"It's difficult basically because its the more or less the last kick of the game," he said of the way the game was won.

"I don't think we necessarily deserved it, but as I've spoken about before there are going to be times when we need to deal with disappointment, tonight was one of those and it's a reminder that the situation that we're in is going to fluctuate.

"I think we're a bit unlucky, but that's life and we'll deal with it."

The momentum of the game shifted in the second-half, with the Hornets losing some defensive stability late on.

An injury to Nathaniel Chalobah meant they lost one of their midfielders and that they had to sit back more than they would have liked.

"He had an injury the first-half, fell awkwardly on his hip," Pearson said about Chalobah.

"It wasn't our intention to sit back, we've had a lot of football, the same players playing a lot of football. I think it's more testament to Villa being positive and putting us under pressure, but I thought we dealt with it relatively comfortably.

"I think one of things you have to realize sometimes is that things won't go your way and that's what happened in the last minute, so it's very easy to reflect on performances when things go your way, we had a situation at the weekend where things could have gone very much our way and at the end it could have gone against us and it didn't. Tonight, we've been a bit unlucky."