Beppe Sannino apologised to Watford’s travelling fans after the 2-0 defeat at Bolton Wanderers and admitted he and his players endured a “bad day at the office”.

First-half goals from Lukas Jutkiewicz and Joe Mason were enough to seal all three points for the hosts who were deserving winners and could have made the victory more emphatic with great chances in both halves.

Sannino admitted it was a disappointing day all round for his team and said sorry to the 638 Watford supporters who had made the long trip to the Reebok Stadium.

“It was a bad day at the office today for all of us but what I want to say in particular is sorry to all the people from Watford who came here today to watch the game,” Sannino said.

“I know it’s not possible but if I could I would like to replay the game now.”

The defeat brings to an end an encouraging run of form that had seen Watford go unbeaten in five matches and Sannino believes the result shows his team still has a lot of work to do defensively.

“I am disappointed as well because today we ended a good run; it was five games that we were unbeaten,” he said.

“Maybe today we were in a position to start thinking we have found our solidity in terms of shape and organisation.

“But today we lacked a lot in this part of the pitch and we were exposed by Bolton who caused us problems.”

The Italian added: “We will forget try to forget today as soon as possible but at the same time I don't want us to forget it because we made a lot of mistakes.”

Sannino made changes in the second half to try to turn the game around as the team adopted a 4-3-3 formation within five minutes of the restart.

The Hornets head coach was planning to be more offensive in the second period but was also forced into a change due to an injury to Marco Cassetti, who was replaced by Daniel Pudil.

“I was thinking to change the system during half-time because we were 2-0 down and we had to try to do better in the second half.

“The change was also a little bit anticipated because Cassetti had to come off.”