Thursday 7 April 2016 13:55, UK
Quique Sanchez Flores says it is his fault Watford have lost focus in the Premier League because they have been distracted by the FA Cup.
Watford have lost each of their last four top-flight matches against Manchester United, Leicester, Stoke and Arsenal, the most recent by a 4-0 scoreline.
A 2-1 success at the Emirates put Watford in the semi-finals of the FA Cup, in which they will play Crystal Palace at Wembley on April 24.
It's a match which has their fans excited but Flores concedes that sense of anticipation is affecting his players.
"We have a couple of distractions", he said. "First is that we got 37 points a while ago and a feeling that everything is done in the league, which is not good.
"Also the FA Cup is a distraction. In the club we talk a lot about it, but not much about the Premier League.
"We need to change the mentality and change the focus as quickly as possible. We need to recuperate our good performances. The responsibility is to the coach, me.
"I need to focus on what is the target. They don't respond in the way I like because I am not able to transmit the necessary ambition to play the Premier League games," he added.
"I prefer to assume the responsibility and I have to support the players. We need to be competitive because the Premier League is very tough and it's possible to lose many matches."
Watford are still not mathematically safe in the Premier League but with a 10-point advantage over 18th-placed Sunderland and only seven games left, they should avoid relegation to the Championship.
Flores has defended his team's overall run of results and stressed he is doing everything he can to improve their fortunes.
"The run isn't completely bad," he added. "We play in the FA Cup too and had eight matches we lost, drawn two and won six so it's eight against eight.
"We don't have the feeling that 'again we lost'. We lose and win and lose and win, across the competitions.
"The players deserve to finish well in this competition because they played really well in the first half of the season.
"We need to be ambitious. We are training well, really hard. We didn't lose the level in the training ground.
"I don't know what happened in the matches. I promise the fans that the players are going to fight and focus."
