Centre-back Josh Pask admitted he was buzzing after volleying home the winner in West Ham United U23s’ 3-2 London derby win over Tottenham Hotspur on Monday afternoon.
The defender, who missed large chunks of last campaign through injury, smashed in the visitors’ third at Spurs’ training ground to complete a superb Hammers comeback against their rivals.
The hosts had gone 2-0 up in a comfortable first half but succumbed to intense West Ham pressure early in the second as Dan Kemp fired in his second in as many games before Nathan Holland equalised with a cracker.
And Pask was delighted to bag the all-important third after centre-half partner Tunji Akinola had knocked down cleverly with his head.
“It was a great feeling for me,” said Pask. “I haven’t scored in a while so coming back from a couple of injuries, of course it was good to score. I’m buzzing – it’s always good to get a goal, to be fair.
“Tunji did well to head the ball back towards me, and it was a pretty easy finish, I just kept my composure and volleyed it in.
“Especially with the rivalry, we’re all buzzing after that and we’ll go again on Sunday in loads of confidence from today. It’s been a decent start to the season with two wins from three, so it’s so far, so good.”
Manager Terry Westley lamented his side’s first half performance after the game but there could be no complaints as the east Londoners raced out the blocks in the second half, stunning their opponents to eventually take home maximum points.
Despite the disappointment at half time, Pask was convinced his team were always likely to find a way back into the game, he revealed afterwards.
“In the first half, we were lethargic and Spurs came out strong to be fair to them. Second half though, we had a team talk and Terry gave us a good talking to, and that got us going for the second half and we came out firing.
“We scored three quick goals in the second half so we’ll take that and we defended very well for the rest of the game.
“I knew we would have a chance to get back into it if we scored early. We have goals in our team – we know when we are attacking well we can score goals against anybody.
“That’s what it felt like after Kempy scored, that we were always going to get more. We have Martin [Samuelsen], Nathan [Holland], Toni [Martinez], Grady [Diangana] as well as Kempy…we have firepower and we have goals and like you can see, we scored three in about 15 minutes.
“We’re definitely confident going forward and we’ll look to keep doing that same thing throughout the rest of our games.”