Enzo Maresca felt Championship leaders Leicester thoroughly deserved their thumping 4-0 win over Plymouth as they secured their biggest victory of the season so far.

Leicester took the lead through Stephy Mavididi’s 14th-minute penalty before Patson Daka coolly found the net four minutes into the second period and the former struck again with a drilled effort after 52 minutes to make it three.

The Foxes completed the scoring after 55 minutes courtesy of Wilfred Ndidi’s accurate finish, the Nigeria international continuing to impress boss Maresca, who has given the midfielder more of an attacking role this term.

Maresca said: “It was a very good performance, we completely deserved the three points, we controlled the game really well.

“We are trying to improve the way we play. We know we have the best defence and we have scored the second most goals in the league.

“Wilf has improved a lot. In terms of physicality you expect everything, you don’t expect quality (in the final third), but since day one I can see there is something there.

“I’m happy because when you see a player making the effort to understand how they have to play it’s good and he deserves it.

“The situation with Patson has been a bit strange. Since day one he has worked and behaved fantastically, but because I play with one striker he hasn’t got many minutes.

“It was a chance for him and he took it and I’m very happy for him because he completely deserves it.”

Plymouth suffered their heaviest defeat of the season and remain winless in 10 matches on their travels this campaign.

Argyle boss Steven Schumacher said: “We’re disappointed with the result. I was really pleased with a lot of aspects, the performance, effort and commitment was outstanding.

“We should have been level at half-time. In the second half we’ve been undone by one moment of quality and a couple of mistakes.

“As long as the players keep putting the effort in, which I know they are and our fans can see that they are, then we’ll be fine.

“We just didn’t have enough quality to put the ball in the back of the net. They’ve got better players than us and are more clinical and have played at a better level, we’re doing the best we can.

“The fans can see we’re giving it our all and doing our best, unfortunately we just came up against a team who are better than us.

“We cannot let our standard drop, we can’t let the energy drop, we need to be a bit more clinical in both boxes.”