Michail Antonio said any personal satisfaction from scoring his third and fourth goals of the season was wiped out by Watford notching four in reply on Saturday.
Antonio, whose outstanding from at the start of the 2016/17 season earned him an England call-up two weeks ago, was the man on the spot again to nod home twice inside the opening 33 minutes.
But Watford came roaring back to inflict a league defeat on the Hammers for the first time at their new home – and that left the No30 frustrated.
He said: ”I’d rather not score and win the game than score two goals and lose it. We came out raring to go and started well, but after we got two-up I think we took our foot off it, and now it’s pure frustration.
“We had other opportunities to kill the game, but we didn’t manage to do that and defensively we made a couple of mistakes.
“All we can do is say sorry to the fans for that and move on to the next game.”
No player has scored more Premier League goals with his head over the last two seasons than Antonio and he just wants the service to keep on coming.
He continued: “I’m hoping to score with my feet now! The service keeps coming and if it goes there I’m going to score goals. It came today and hopefully I can keep scoring, but it is more important for us to win games.
“In the first half an hour we showed the threat we have, but we’ve got to do that for 90 minutes.
“We can’t afford to make the mistakes we did, because in the Premier League you will get punished.
“We’ve got to keep going and keep working hard in training.”