Gianfranco Zola was delighted Watford were able to reward the efforts of those who helped clear the Vicarage Road pitch and surrounds of snow earlier this morning with a 4-0 victory over Huddersfield Town.

Speaking after the win, the Hornets head coach said: “I just found out that this morning, more than 100 supporters turned up here to help clear the pitch of the snow so I think they’ve been gifted with this performance and they deserved it.”

The Hornets had to wait until first-half injury-time to make the breakthrough when Troy Deeney scored a penalty after Matej Vydra had been fouled by Calum Woods. But once Vydra turned in Marco Cassetti’s cross 11 minutes after the restart there was never much doubt about the outcome.

The in-form Czech international then scored his eighth in his last four Watford league starts and 16th of the season after excellent hold-up play by Deeney. The hosts saved their best for last though, when a memorable one-touch length-of-the-pitch passing move ended with Cristian Battocchio netting his first for the club.

Zola said: “I think we’ve played some better games than this but it was a mature game. The result is a little bit too hard towards Huddersfield because in the first half they made it very, very difficult for us, so we had to work hard. I think the goal towards the end [of the first half] helped the team a lot because we then, in the second half, managed to play the football that we want to play. They had to open up a little bit more.

“But it was mature because, as I said, playing at home and playing away is a completely different thing and we need to learn to do better when we play home. We know what we need to do when we are away from home, at home we need to improve and today’s performance was excellent in terms of this.”