Graham Potter hailed the spirit, commitment and togetherness of his West Ham United squad and the Claret and Blue Army following Sunday’s 2-0 Premier League win at Manchester United.
Outstanding goals in either half from Tomáš Souček and Jarrod Bowen secured the Hammers’ first top-flight victory at Old Trafford since May 2007, but it took a determined all-round performance, dogged defending and outstanding goalkeeping from Alphonse Areola to ensure the three points boarded the bus back to east London.
A run of 16 winless games since Carlos Tevez completed the Great Escape 18 years ago this month came to an end as Souček flicked home Mohammed Kudus’s low cross at the end of an impressive 30-pass move involving nine of West Ham’s eleven players, and Bowen converted Aaron Wan-Bissaka’s centre after superb work from Kudus.
Areola then made two wonderful saves to deny Rasmus Højlund as Manchester United ramped up the pressure late on, and the Irons held on securely to score an historic success.
Head Coach Potter was pleased with the display – including those of soon to be out-of-contract Aaron Cresswell and Vladimír Coufal, who both started – and is targeting a strong finish to the season at home to Nottingham Forest and on the final day at Ipswich Town.
Winning away at Old Trafford, I don’t think it happens too often for West Ham, so it’s a fantastic day for everybody connected with the Club.
I’m so pleased for the players and the supporters. You know, we’ve had a tough season, so to give the supporters, who’ve been fantastic with us, that type of day, I think it’s really important for everybody connected with the Club, as the support we’ve had has been amazing.
It’s been a tough couple of months, to be honest. Results-wise, the performances have been quite good and getting there.
I think today’s just a nice reward for everybody because sticking together and being connected is not easy when results don’t go your way.
So, yes, I’m just really proud of the players.
We scored two goals goals today, and I think we scored some good goals at Brighton and the goal we scored against Tottenham was a good goal, too.
We’ve had some good passages of play, but the hardest thing in football is attacking, to create, to be the protagonist in the game.
We’ve had to suffer a little bit on the way because we’ve inherited a situation where the team was conceding a lot of goals, and we’ve tried to address that and then you sort of move on towards how we want to be.
We’re a long way from where we want to be, but I think there are signs.
I can’t fault the players. Like I said, the biggest thing I can say to them is it’s not easy when you go on a run like we’ve had and to be connected, to be together, to be fighting for each other, to work every day in the best way, I think it’s a credit to them.
Credit to them as professionals, as they’ve been fantastic.
When you win at Old Trafford, I think you have to have everybody doing everything as best they can, and I think that was the case.
You need the subs to come on, you need the starting players to be good, your goalkeeper to make some saves, defenders to defend when they have to, midfielders doing both, forwards helping out, everything.
You need everything, to score some good goals, to suffer when you have to, collectively.
You need everything, and our supporters were there as well, so it was a brilliant day.
We want to finish off as strong as we can and with results, because performances are performances.
There’s bits of it, but results matter. I think results, of course, [are important] because we want to win more than we have, and I think today will help us do that.
It’s a set of foundation. It’s confidence. It’s belief.
On the back of, as I said, the fantastic support that we’ve had during a tough period where everybody’s stuck together, so I can only say thank you to everybody connected with West Ham for that.
I think the performances [of Coufal and Cresswell] were a testament to them.
It was never in doubt.
They are top professionals, top people, and they’ve all been fantastic servants to the Club and they won’t let you down, that’s for sure.
So, yes, I really hope that everybody comes and gives them the send-off that they deserve, because they’ve been incredible from my perspective and I’ve only been here a little while and they’ve done such a lot for this Club.
It’s nice for them that they get to enjoy a day like this.
