Matching, and often more than matching, a top Championship team like London City Lionesses but not taking goalscoring opportunities is not going to be good enough.

That was the view of Watford head coach Damon Lathrope after he saw his side lose 3-2 at Princes Park having carved out enough openings to comfortably get a point and even go on to win the game.

“We need to start converting our chances because we created more than enough to win the game, in my opinion. Not just to get a draw, but to win the game,” he said afterwards.

“We worked the ball into a dangerous area on a number of occasions, and we have to make sure we convert that into goals.

“You can’t create ten chances in a game, only convert two and expect to get points.”

Down the other end, putting the three goals conceded to one side, keeper Olivia Clark really only had one more demanding save to make.

“I was pleased with the performance, bar maybe a 20-minute spell in the first half where we lost our way a little bit and London City punished our mistakes,” said Lathrope.

“We know in this league teams are ruthless. We gave them three opportunities and they scored three goals.

“Other than maybe one more save I don’t think our keeper had too much to do, but we know that is going to be the nature of this league.”

The Watford boss asked his team at half-time to be braver, and perhaps show their hosts less respect.

“I wanted us to just be us. At times in the first half I felt there was just a little bit of fear,” he said.

“I don’t care if the players make mistakes, I really don’t. What I care about is how they respond to mistakes.

“We have a way of playing and we ain’t going to be changing that. We need to brave in those moments and react in a positive way.

“The players know what we’re asking of them, and they know they won’t get a telling off if they make a mistake trying to do that.

“To give the players their dues, they came out in the second half and gave a very positive reaction.

“I thought we saw a lot of very good play and it was just in that final third where we were lacking, that little bit of quality right at the end.”

Newly-promoted teams are generally tipped to struggle, but Lathrope said he and his squad are looking up and not down.

“We didn’t see ourselves as underdogs coming into this league,” he said.

“Everybody else probably would, and perhaps rightly so, but that’s everybody else’s opinions.

“We’re not bothered at all inside our camp. We know what we want to do, and we know how we’re going to do it.

“If we can produce that sort of performance against London City, who you would expect to be up there, then we’re very happy.”

Watford were hindered by the loss of striker Michelle Agyemang before half-time. The dual-registered Arsenal player clearly had the home defence back-tracking, but she limped off before half-time after falling awkwardly.

“It was more precautionary than anything else,” Lathrope explained.

“We don’t want to put her in any risk situations, so as soon we knew there was something not right then we took her out of the game.

“She is a top, top talent and we want her to be available for us.”