It’s a clip that nobody connected with Watford – least of all Hasane Kamara – will want to watch too often, and yet Middlesbrough’s opening goal warranted further reviews just to understand how it unfolded.

The Hornets had the ball inside the Boro box but, within seconds, Cameron Archer had got behind Kamara and ran clear from just inside the Watford half.

Even then keeper Daniel Bachmann did extremely well to see Archer’s heavy touch as he moved into the box and block at his feet, only for Chuba Akpom to follow up, mishit his first attempt but then head home when the ball looped up in the air.

It was ‘Carry On Defending’ and head coach Slaven Bilic was as angry as he was bemused.

“How can you explain it? I mean, how do you explain that goal?,” he groaned.

“You are facing a good player in a one on one. It’s basic. You kick the ball out. It’s as simple as that.

“I’m not asking you to beat their player and then go forward and assist in a goal. I’m just asking for very simple things.”

While readily admitting the home side fully deserved to win, Bilic felt his own team’s performance made their task even easier.

“Boro played well and they have some lovely players, but we made them look good also,” he said.

“We knew how they would play and there is a way to play against that, and there is a way to hurt them.

“So many times we got into good situations where you wouldn’t even be happy with a corner. You’re expecting something, and then along the way we lose the ball.

“We all know in football these things can happen once or twice. But for us there was a third time, a fourth time, a fifth time.”

Bilic opted to start with Hamza Choudhury on the right of a back three.

“We knew how they liked to play down their left side, and we thought that was the way for us to stop them,” he explained.

“But in order for that to work you have to step up. You have to be more aggressive on how you deal with the guy who is on the ball.”

If automatic promotion was a pipedream before yesterday, it’s now almost certainly out of reach.

“We have to be realistic and on this performance it’s not a case of us catching the top two: it’s more that teams underneath will catch us,” said Bilic.

“That performance today was not us. I am not talking about my team in general, I am talking about this 90 minutes.

“What happened today was not about difficult details. It was about simple things. Pass the ball to our players and don’t slip over.

“If you pass the ball to the opponents and you slip over, and you do it often enough, then it’s only a matter of time before they score. But then on top of that you make the mistake we did for the first goal.”