Goalkeeper Daniel Bachmann is always prepared to face questions regardless of results and performances, but even he admitted that he was fed up trying to explain another grim away day.

One thing he certainly wasn’t going to do was make any excuses.

“Today was nothing to do injuries or anything else,” he said.

“If we’re making mistakes like we did today, if we can’t play simple five or ten-yard passes, if we get bullied all over the pitch . . . well, we all have to step up and stop it.

“Multiple times this season I’ve stood here and said ‘that can’t happen’ or ‘we shouldn’t be doing that’.

“We have a good team with good players, and it’s down to us to stop this happening.”

The Austrian international said he expected many Watford fans who had made the 450-mile round-trip would no doubt have a bad night’s sleep when they got home, just as he would,

“We have to stay positive, but this really hurt. We can’t be losing games in that way. I get emotional about it because it hurts,” he said.

“I’ll go home and not be able to sleep well, and I probably speak for the fans when I say that. You can’t sleep well after that.

“This is a long journey and a difficult place to get to, and the fans have come here in good numbers again. So many times this season they’ve made long journeys and we’ve not performed at all.

“That was nowhere near good enough. It’s simple as that.

“Middlesbrough were good but we made them look good. They were so much better than us in everything they did: five-yard passes, running, tackling.

“Fair play to them for taking the chances, but I don’t think we could have made it any easier for them.

“They went through us like a knife through butter, and that is really, really frustrating.”

Bachmann said that as professionals paid to play football, he and the rest of the squad need to realise that privilege and thrive on it.

“We’re lucky enough to play football and we should enjoy it. We don’t, we play like we’re scared and we do that too often.

“We know we have the quality but we have to show it. We’ve said too many times about occasions when we haven’t.

“God knows what we’re afraid of, but we need to start going out on the pitch with our chests out and our heads up.

“We need to start taking a bit more responsibility when we have the ball. We can’t go out there and be afraid of making mistakes.”