The incredible desire West Ham United displayed during Saturday’s 3-2 Premier League win over Burnley left midfielder Mateus Fernandes feeling proud.
Since coming on to head in his first Hammers goal in the away defeat at Leeds United in late October, the Portuguese has played a key role in securing back-to-back Premier League wins - for the first time since February - against Newcastle United and the Clarets, and believes he and his team have collectively now turned a corner.
On this latest occasion, against Scott Parker's Burnley at London Stadium, Zian Flemming’s opener gave the visitors the lead, but Callum Wilson levelled the scoring with a precise header at the end of the first half.
Substitute Tomáš Souček then put us ahead with a close-range strike into the bottom left corner, and Kyle Walker-Peters prodded home our third of the afternoon three minutes from full-time.
Academy of Football graduate Josh Cullen made sure of a nervy ending for us when he finished past Alphonse Areola with seconds to go, but we clung on to claim an important victory.
Fernandes believes we deserved the three points and is confident we can build on it after the November international break.
“Once again, we deserved it,” insisted Fernandes, who has now headed off to represent Portugal U21s in a UEFA Euro U21 qualifying clash against Czechia.
“I think the game against Leeds was perhaps the most important for us in the season, to look at what we did wrong and what we can do much, much better.
“When I spoke after that game, I said we will work hard in silence to play well, to win three points, and we did another really good game today.
“We also did a good game last week, and now we have to go for more. We know how big the Club is, so we will work even more to win more and more games and more points.
“When we start losing in the Premier League, it's even more difficult, so it’s about mentality. We have worked very hard in these last two weeks on this, and we believe now we are playing like we know, like we're training.
“We just play with enough pressure, you know, to feel the game, to enjoy it. If you go to the pitch with problems, you can't perform well, so I enjoyed it very, very much.”
Fernandes heaped plenty of praise on super-sub Souček after he came off the bench at 1-1 and helped turn the game on its head.
Our No28’s instinctive finish saw him bundle home our second from close range, before Walker-Peters added our third shortly after.
“You can see all the players matter,” Fernandes said. “Tomáš came from the bench, and he was the difference.
“So, for me, he was the Man of the Match. He's a top guy, a top professional. We want more victories now, and we want to continue these games.”
Fernandes explained he is feeling more at home in east London all the time, after it felt like he covered every blade of grass at London Stadium.
And though he opened his scoring account for West Ham at Elland Road, and is hungry to add to his goals tally going forward, he is confident he has plenty to offer the team all over the pitch.
He said: “I spoke with the manager, he told me some things I need to learn and need to work on.
“I will continue to work, but I'm playing with top players. It's so easy to play with [Lucas] Paquetá, [Tomáš] Souček, [Freddie] Potts, [Soungoutou] Magassa, Guido [Rodríguez] and [Andy] Irving, and we have a lot of quality.”
