Marco Silva once again praised Watford’s battling spirit for a “great result” he felt was fully merited following this afternoon’s dramatic 2-2 draw at West Bromwich Albion.

Having been hit with a two-goal burst inside three first-half minutes from Solomon Rondon and Jonny Evans, the visitors deservedly got back into the game before half-time through Abdoluaye Doucoure.

But despite continuing to control large parts of the game, it looked like the Hornets’ efforts would go unrewarded until the fifth minute of injury-time when Richarlison headed in a Jose Holebas free-kick to repeat his last-gasp efforts of a week ago in the win at Swansea City.

“It’s great spirit and it’s a great result,” the Hornets boss said. “After [being behind] 2-0 it looks a very, very good result, but I think everybody that was in the stadium and watching the game on TV will believe our team deserved to take a good result this afternoon.

“I think we started well. Some moments we were too slow but we came here to play our game. We took some risks but the other team start to circulate the ball and we made some mistakes. We lost the ball and they scored one goal and after five minutes they scored a second, but we reacted very well. In the last 20 minutes of the first half we scored one goal and there were one or two clear chances to score again.

“In the first 30 minutes of the second half sometimes they’re defending with 10 in the box, but we had two clear chances to score before we scored the goal. We deserved the goal we scored in the last minute but I think we deserved to score before.”

He continued: “We showed big character, big personality, big spirit as a team and until the end we believed. In the last 15 minutes we played with some risk with two strikers, but everybody believed. This is our way.”