Paul Dickov praised his “outstanding” Doncaster Rovers side after they ended Watford’s Capital One Cup hopes with a 2-1 victory at Vicarage Road last night.

A Nathan Tyson penalty, awarded after Gabriel Tamas tripped Kyle Bennett, set the visitors on their way, but the Hornets were back on terms shortly after the half-hour when Lloyd Dyer fired home following a neat flick from Odion Ighalo.

The home side though, started the second half poorly – as they had done in the first – and they paid the price again six minutes after the restart when Liam Wakefield converted after a fine build-up had resulted in Dean Furman playing in a low centre from the right side of the 18-yard box.

The Rovers manager said: “I thought we were outstanding. We’ve come to a very good team who are flying high at the minute and really took the game to them. I’ve just looked at some of the stats. I think they had one shot on target so defensively that shows you how good we were, especially with a really young back four. And I thought going forward, some of the breaks, we kept the ball, we moved the ball at pace and I’m delighted for the boys.”

He continued: “We knew it was going to be difficult. They play expansive football but credit to all the players. They’ve changed the system three or four times to try to one, break us down and two, try and cope with us on the back and to a man I thought they were all outstanding.”

Asked about his side’s strong display at the back, Dickov responded: “The first 20, 25 minutes I thought we were outstanding and then because we were on top we tried to get a little bit clever and started to complicate things. So we told them at half-time to keep it simple, do the basics right, do what we keep asking them to do in training which is keep the ball, move it quickly and in the second half we did that excellently.”