Nigel Pearson believes the play-off semi-final remains “evenly poised” but says Leicester City will aim to also win the second leg at Vicarage Road on Sunday following their 1-0 victory over Watford.

A Dave Nugent header in the last ten minutes settled the first leg in the Foxes’ favour and their manager reflected after last night’s contest: “I think both sides will still feel they’ve got a very good chance of progressing. I think tonight’s game was what you would expect – tight. We started the game very, very well. There’s always going to be that element of if you don’t turn your advantage in terms of possession etcetera into goals that people can get frustrated but we dealt with the occasion very well and it’s nice to go into the second game with a narrow advantage.

“In terms of how we go about the next game now, we’ll try and win that one as well. Even before we started tonight, our approach was going to try and win both games because I think we’re a better team when we’re on the front foot playing positive football.

“I think we played pretty well,” Pearson added, “they came with a positive intent as well and there were two sides trying to win the game so, like I say, it’s evenly poised.”

This was only Leicester’s fourth win in their last 19 games and the manager continued: “We’ve had quite a tough 2013 so far in the sense of having been in a very good position around February time, we’ve made it hard for ourselves but once you get into these play-off placeds I don’t think what’s gone on before really has too much bearing on it.

“I suspected going into that Watford wouldn’t come here with any great hangover [after missing out on automatic promotion] because of the players they’ve got and the manager they’ve got. I’m sure he’s [Gianfranco Zola's] been in here already and he’s not someone to dwell on disappointment and so, bearing that in mind, it was a very good game tonight, both sides showed that positive intent and I think it will be the same again on Sunday.”