Vladimir Ivić admitted the Hornets weren’t at their flowing best against Derby County but was satisfied with his team’s resilience until the final whistle to secure three points on the road.
The visitors stepped it up in the second period after a first half to forget and in the end a moment of brilliance from João Pedro broke the deadlock 15 minutes from time.
“It wasn’t pretty, but we did our job in the game and took three points, and from today we need to look to our next game on Wednesday,” said the Head Coach.
“I know [creating chances] is one of our problems from the beginning. In some previous games we had more chances than today.”
Ivić in part puts this down to the youth in his side and reiterated his regular stance that they are learning and improving every week.
“Today we didn’t create a lot, but I’ve said a lot of times we have up front a lot of young players who are playing for the first time in the Championship,” he said.
“We must have patience with them, and work with them to improve movement, duels, one against ones and finishing. We work on it and in this moment, this is the best we have.”
One young man who is learning quickly is João Pedro, who netted his second Hornets goal by cutting inside at Pride Park and curling a shot into the top right corner past David Marshall.
“He’s a creator, he had one good opportunity to shoot and he did a fantastic finish,” said Ivić.
“He scored a nice goal, for sure I’m happy with him because of his goal and his performance, his fight and his work.
“Not just João Pedro but the rest of the team, they work hard and fought from the first until the last second and this is a team victory. I’m happy because of that and it needs to continue.”
Thankfully the Brazilian’s exit from the field was not due to any serious injury, according to Ivić, and the same can be said of William Troost-Ekong.
“I believe it’s not something major, he just went off because he felt tired,” he said.
“Same with Troost-Ekong. He felt something with his hamstring, but we changed him at the right moment and it’s not something dangerous with him, we hope he is okay.”
