Will Hughes has spoken of his frustration after Watford suffered a miserable 3-0 defeat at the hands of Manchester United on Sunday afternoon and claims the team never recovered from a VAR decision that went against them.

With the home side ahead at half-time, the Hornets scrambled the ball into the net from a corner, via captain Troy Deeney, only for it to be cancelled out for a Craig Dawson handball in the build up.

After that, United took firm control of proceedings and scored twice more to extend Watford's winless run to five matches.

"It's frustrating," said Hughes. "I've not seen it back [the handball] so I can't really comment on it but from what I know it's a real close call.

"But these are the rules, if it hits your hand it's a foul so we had to get on with it. I don't think we recovered from that as well as we should have and against teams like United who have got clinical players, that ended up doing it for us."

That disallowed goals means Watford are still yet to score in the Premier League after conceding under head coach Nigel Pearson, with the last time they managed that the home game against Chelsea back in November.

While Hughes rejected the idea that this, and the fact they have managed just two shots on target in each of their last five games, points to an issue with confidence, he said that an inability to take chances did cost them dearly, something which infuriated both his team-mates and his boss. 

When asked what was said by Pearson in the dressing room after the match, Hughes simply stated, "I can't really repeat much of what was said," before adding: "We're all frustrated, we came here wanting to grab three points and we had a few chances ourselves in the first-half and we have to take them if we want something out of the game. They've got high quality players that are going to punish you.

"I don't think it's a mentality thing, we've got a good mentality, good characters, good players and I don't think it's a case of that, it's just one of those things that we haven't scored after the other team has.

"Mid-December we were nine points off it, at the moment we're only one point. We've got confidence, we've got good players and we've got the right manager to get out of this trouble."

Things will be no easier for the Hornets in their next game with the unbeaten league leaders Liverpool paying a visit to Vicarage Road.

Hughes claims there will be no change in the way Watford approach the match and is confident they can once again recover from a run of bad form, as they did when Pearson first arrived.

"It's going to happen," Hughes said of the five games without a win. 

"We had such a good start under the new manager that we were always going to go through a difficult period, but like I said, with the confidence and the mentality of the players, we know we can get out of it.

"We'll prepare for Liverpool like we do every game. Obviously it's a massively difficult challenge against them, but we're at home and they've got to get beat at one point so hopefully we can do that next weekend."