Victorious Albion boss Roberto Di Matteo has hit back at critics of his team after delivering a downbeat assessment of their huge win against Watford.

The Hawthorns head coach was stony-faced despite his team winning 5-0 at the Hawthorns, after a week of questions about their goalscoring prowess.

He said: “Some of the criticism upset me, because we have a young team. I know it’s all about results and we want to get results. But people forget we have very important members of our team out.

“We’ve had two games where we’ve struggled to score but created chances. We are up there with the highest scoring teams and it’s quite amazing we get criticised for not scoring.

“Ishmael Miller and James Morrison have not played for us. Then you take Roman Bednar and Chris Brunt out and Jerome Thomas was suspended for a while and that’s half a team, with all due respect to my other players.

“We’ve been up at the right end of the table all season so far. We’ve never been fourth from bottom and we just need to stay near the top until we get some players back and we’ll have a stronger team.

“I just want to get promoted and I’ll be a happy man at the end of the season then.”

Di Matteo also refused to get excited by the manner of his team’s impressive win.

He said: “I’d rather win five games 1-0 than one 5-0 because it’s about three points each game. I’m not upset, but I’m not particularly happy.

“We created chances in the last two games and we should have had a penalty or two that wasn’t given. Again, Luke Moore got booked when for me it was a clear penalty because he got the ball past the goalkeeper.

“It’s only one game and, as you see by the results every weekend. It’s a very tough division. It seems like people expect us to be 10 points ahead of everyone. I can’t see any team running away with it.

“We were expecting a very difficult game because Watford have done well away from home. They’re a young exciting team but I think we produced a great performance.

“We work and try hard, but sometimes it doesn’t come off.”