Winston Reid reckons goalscorer Manuel Lanzini is right up there with West Ham United’s best performers this term, after bagging an absolute beauty against Everton on Saturday.
The Argentine brilliantly beat Tim Howard with a deft, curling right-footed effort on the half-hour mark, his fourth Barclays Premier League goal to date.
And though Romelu Lukaku, scoring in an uncanny seventh successive outing against the Hammers, denied the hosts all three points, Reid was quick to shower praise on the 22-year-old loanee.
“He's been brilliant, he has been one of the players of the season so far for us,” Reid told West Ham TV.
“He has been really good and he keeps on improving. He's not just an attacker, he also defends and he can run from box to box. He's very creative, so it's good.
“He's only a young kid, there are going to be some difficult games for him, but fortunately for us he's having really, really good games at the moment. The main thing's that he keeps developing and keeps playing well.”
As for Lukaku, Reid could hardly be blamed for wishing the Belgian were anywhere but the Boleyn Ground on Saturday, as he unpicked the Hammers’ defence yet again. But, all in all, the New Zealander felt that honours even was probably about right in the end.
“I was hoping he [Lukaku] was injured but he wasn't,” Reid joked. “To be fair, we should have dealt with it a little bit better, but they're a good team.
“I think the fans saw two open teams that wanted to go at it and play football. We tried to get the three points but maybe we lacked a little bit of quality in the final third and I guess a point was a fair result at the end of the day.”
Making his first start since the trip to Sunderland back on 3 October, the returning Reid slotted seamlessly back into the Hammers’ rear-guard following a hip injury and hailed the quality of the Club’s four senior centre-halves.
He continued: “That's one of the things that the manager wanted to address before the season, with Angelo [Ogbonna] coming in, and he's been brilliant as well.
“Unfortunately he got injured and Ginge is out for a couple of weeks with his red card, so I stepped in and did a job.
“I'm feeling a good. Obviously I had a problem, so it's going to take a bit of time to get up to 100 per cent. I'll work hard on the training pitches and hope for the best.
“For me personally, after the injury I had it's more to assess where am I now and prepare myself in the best possible way for the next game after the international break.”