The hug Javi Gracia gave Heurelho Gomes in the centre of the Vicarage Road pitch at full-time underlined the regard with which the Watford head coach holds his goalkeeper, but the Hornets boss reiterated a final decision has still to be made on the Brazilian’s future.

Gracia continued his policy of selecting Gomes for cup ties this season and the vastly experienced stopper produced some good saves to help the Hornets reach the FA Cup semi-finals with a 2-1 victory over Leicester City.

The former Tottenham Hotspur keeper has spoken at length this week about how he is “99 per cent” certain he will retire at the end of this campaign, and he went out on a high if today does turn out to be his final appearance at Vicarage Road.

Gracia said: “Everybody knows Heurelho is a very important player for us, when he plays and when he doesn’t play as well. But today he had the chance to play and I was very pleased for him because he played well and he could show his quality and with a good result we are now in the semi-finals and can carry on in this competition.

“This week there were many things about if this will be his last game or not but it’s not so important to me. For me the most important is he’s playing well, he’s enjoying it with the team and we’ll see what happens in the next games and in the future as well. There is no clear decision yet and we will have to speak about him in the future.”