STEVE Cook pulled no punches during his post-match assessment of Cherries’ 2-0 home defeat by Watford and admitted: "We never really turned up."

The central defender played the full 90 minutes against the Hornets at Vitality Stadium as the hosts were undone by second-half goals from Richarlison and Etienne Capoue.

Cook told the Daily Echo: “We were extremely poor all over the pitch and were punished.

“Watford thoroughly deserved the win because we never really turned up.

“To cut a long story short, we were just nowhere near good enough with the ball, the tempo wasn’t there, the typical Bournemouth performance wasn’t there.

“We didn’t defend well, they scored two goals on the counter-attack and it was really difficult to come to terms with because it just wasn’t a good performance at all.

“We didn’t really move the ball quickly enough and hurt them in the final third. When they broke, they broke with pace and power and probably could have scored more than the two goals they had.

“I had a very poor game. There were probably too many of those performances out there.”

He added: “Hopefully, we can rally round and stay positive.

“We are only two games in but we need to get a win and, hopefully, Tuesday against Birmingham is a great chance for us to put that right and spread a bit of positivity around the place.”