Preston fan John Smith was is not in a happy place after two comprehensive defeats in a week

Brad Potts shields the ball from Ismaila Sarr

And similarly on Saturday I was thinking that being among the rats,critters,spiders and snakes in a cold Welsh castle would have been far more pleasurable than tuning in to see another drubbing.

With almost half of our senior squad unavailable due too injuries and suspensions, I had expected a defeat especially as most of the Watford squad had played last season in their relegation from the Premier League and they had won five and drawn one of their opening six home league matches.

Hoping against hope that this would not be the case I was encouraged by a promising start in which we had two early shots and my optimism rose but after we conceded the opening goal they soon reverted back to previous form.

The performance was a lot better than Tuesday night's diabolical show but it could hardly have been much worse.

Despite having plenty of possession it was the familiar story of not getting enough shots in to test the home keeper which was our undoing.

We got our goal when Tom Barkhuizen's shot from distance deflected into the net but by this time we had conceded another goal and the home side soon went upfield to restore their two goal lead.

Like Tuesday the game was over as a contest with almost 20 minutes of it left to play.The home side, whose substitute strikers were a £4m Croatian Under-21s international and an £18 million signing just had way too much firepower in what was a very comfortable win.

I feel we just cannot compete at the moment against teams with this amount of money with the frustrating thing being that despite having had a billionaire owner for the last 10 years we are no better off in terms of league position since his takeover.

In previous seasons I think we have punched above our weight and relied on a good team spirit to pull us through but with contracts of key players running down fast this now appears to be fading a little and if we are not careful soon we will be in a relegation battle .