Watford head coach Vladimir Ivic has praised Watford's "team victory" over Derby County, as they picked up their third win of the season.

Joao Pedro's late strike, the Hornets' only effort on target in the match, won the game late on and while Ivic was pleased with Pedro's performance, he said it was the team's fighting spirit that ultimately claimed the three points.

"He's created one good opportunity for him to shoot, it was a fantastic finish and he scored a nice goal," Ivic said about Pedro. "I'm satisfied and I'm happy because of his goal and because of his performance, his fight, his work for 80, 85 minutes.

"Not just Joao Pedro, but the rest of the team. The whole team worked hard, they fought from the first until the last second and this is a team victory. I'm happy because of that and we need to continue."

While Watford dug deep to find the victory, creativity was noticeably lacking for the majority of the game and Ivic said it is an attribute he is keen for his side to improve on.

However, given the amount of youngsters in his team, he knows it is going to require some work and some patience in order for them to make the improvements needed.

 "It wasn't pretty," he said. "I know that [creativity] is one of the main problem from the beginning of the Championship. In some previous games, we had more chances than today - today we didn't create a lot, but I've said a lot of times that we have in front a lot of young players who are playing for the first time in the Championship.

"A lot of them are 19, 20 years old and we must have patience with them and work with them to improve their movements, their duals, one against one and finishing. We work on it, but in this moment, this is the best that we have."

Goalscorer Pedro left the game early with what looked like a slight knock, as did debutant defender William Troost-Ekong, but Ivic believes neither player has a serious issue.

"I believe that it's not that something's injured. [Pedro] just went off because he felt tired," said Ivic. 

"The same with Ekong, he felt some problem in his hamstring, but I believe that we changed him in the right moment and it's not something dangerous with him, we hope that he's okay."