Watford 1 Middlesbrough 0: Gibson rapped as Boro made to pay the penalty

The Hornets took the lead through Troy Deeney’s penalty five minutes into the second half, only to be reduced to 10 men soon after when Samba Diakite was sent off for a two-footed challenge.

However, the red card count was quickly levelled up when Gibson was dismissed and the Boro chief said: “I didn’t see it but it’s a mistake. When you have one yellow card, you can’t do this. You need to be more intelligent and we lost the game for our mistakes.

“We were losing but we were one man more and I thought with the three subs I had made we could change the score but, five minutes later, Gibson was sent off and the game was very, very difficult.

“The problem is the mistakes. It’s not the mentality or the capacity of my players because we played today at 100 per cent like we played a lot of games in the past.

“We could beat Watford playing with 11 players, playing with 10 players but when we don’t play like we can it’s difficult to win.

This was Boro’s fifth consecutive game without scoring and asked about the lack of goals, Karanka replied: “Sometimes it can be luck but sometimes it’s because you didn’t do everything to score goals and when you don’t do those things it’s more difficult.

“Today and in other games, like Doncaster, we didn’t do the good things. We played very well in the last game at home to Blackburn and we had a lot of chances and I thought we were unlucky, but today I didn’t.”

Giuseppe Sannino praised the spirit of his Watford team after they moved to within six points of the play-off places.

The Watford chief also had no complaints with the two dismissals and said: “I think if the referee sent them off they deserved to be sent off.”

Watford: Bond, Cassetti, Angella, Doyley (Hoban 46), Faraoni (Anya 64), Diakite, Murray, Tozser, Pudil, Deeney, Forestieri (Battocchio 71). Unused substitutes: Bellerin, Merkel, Park, Woods.

Middlesbrough: Given, Varga (Main 73), Woodgate (Kamara 84), Gibson, Friend, Ledesma (Carayol 46), Leadbitter, Chalobah, Whitehead, Adomah, Graham. Unused substitutes: Butterfield, Konstantopoulos, Hines, Omeruo.

Referee: O Langford (W Midlands).

Man of the match: Fernando Forestieri.