Nigel Pearson has described Watford's 3-1 defeat away at West Ham United as both "annoying" and an "opportunity missed". 

Two early goals had the home side on the front foot within ten minutes of kick-off before a third strike in the first-half had them more or less beaten before half-time.

The Hornets now remain just three points above the relegation zone going into a difficult final week of the season in which they will face both Manchester City and Arsenal in their search for Premier League safety.

The head coach said he realises just how big of a chance has been missed with the defeat and claims that the performance was not what he would expect from his players.

"It's a poor result for us," he said. "It's a game which has passed us by somewhat in the first-half performance wise. It's not what I would expect from us and it's very disappointing. We've got to find a win now in the last two games. 

"[Conceding twice early on] is not easy to deal with. I didn't think we were resilient enough collectively. I'm not saying everybody was, we had some spirited performances out there, but we were not what I would expect from us. Whether that's the pressure of the situation, who knows? But now we have to find good performances in the last two games to give us chances of winning those games, it's as simple as that."

Pearson refused to attribute blame to individuals and said that the club were all in the difficult situation together.

the head coach knows that points in those final two games are essential, no matter how difficult the task may appear.

"The players and the staff, we are in this together," he insisted. "So I'm not going to be, especially on an individual level, overly critical. The players know themselves we've let an opportunity pass us by, it's annoying, both sides went into this game with a big chance of almost certainly securing safety and what we've done in a spell in the first-half is let that situation go and that is really annoying. 

"One of the things that we will all do tonight is get home and think about it, it will be annoying because we've missed an opportunity. We've not done what we talked about doing, or looked at doing and that's a difficult situation. We have to go and completely make sure that we bounce back in the last two games now, it's fairly straight forward."