Nigel Pearson has said he was not surprised to see Craig Dawson score an equaliser for Watford in their first Premier League game back following the coronavirus outbreak, against Leicester City.

The Hornets looked as if they had dropped a point when Ben Chilwell smashed a stunning effort into the top corner of Ben Foster's goal in the last minute of the game.

But Dawson scored a dramatic bicycle kick three minutes into stoppage time to nick a point back for the home side.

While Pearson was sceptical about the amount of practise that Dawson puts into such acrobatic efforts, he was nevertheless pleased for the defender to get his first for the club.

"Dawson's a very committed player," said Pearson.

"He says he practises it, I'm not sure about that but he's very pleased with his contribution today, he's had to be patient. Kabasele and Cathcart have been, for a long time, a partnership and he's had to wait for his chance. He's come back in today and at both ends of the pitch been very, very committed and I'm pleased for him. It doesn't surprise me that he's come up with an equaliser for us."

Pearson was also pleased with the way his side reacted to going behind, particularly considering this was their first competitive fixture in over three months.

The Hornets head coach praised the decision made by the league to allow five substitutes instead of the customary three and said it helped his side avoid injuries.

"When you concede at the point we did in the context of the game  it can be very difficult to recover from," he said. "But we created one last chance and were able to take it, so I'm really pleased for the players. I think when you consider the limited preparation time that we've had, and remember that the players came back in good condition physically, it's not as if we've had to build too much on their base level of fitness, to get into a match fitness conditions is not necessarily easy, especially in the short time frame that we've been working in.

"But they've done well and I'm very pleased that we opted to go with the five substitutes to be used from nine because we've used them all today and if we could've used six we probably would've used six. It's helped us to negotiate a situation which, if that had not been the case, we may have picked up some injuries today. I'm pleased that when players have been called on to go and do a job, they've done it."