Billy McKinlay hailed a job well done as West Ham United secured a deserved 3-1 win at Udinese in the second of three mid-season warm-up fixtures.
The Hammers were without eight senior players at the Dacia Arena, with five at the FIFA World Cup finals and three absent through injury, but still produced an eye-catching performance that produced some fine attacking football, three goals, some dogged defending, secure goalkeeping and, ultimately, a welcome victory.
The Irons carried a threat throughout, with Jarrod Bowen looking sharp and having a hand in two goals, Said Benrahma scoring for the second time in four days, Manuel Lanzini netting a 25-yard rocket and Michail Antonio converting late on to complete a worthwhile, whirlwind 24 hours in cold, wet north-eastern Italy.
With two weeks of training and one final preparation match at Fulham – the club where McKinlay started his coaching career 15 years ago – next Saturday afternoon, the assistant coach believes David Moyes’ squad are in good shape ahead of the Premier League restart at Arsenal on Boxing Day.
It was a pleasing afternoon, I think.
There was plenty of goalmouth action at both ends and we created a number of chances and played some good football going forward.
It was encouraging to get a good performance and a good win.
It’s just good to get back into it. It was a good level of game and we showed some good stuff. The players are working hard and we’ve got another game next week to get us ready for the Arsenal game so we’re good to go.
We’re looking to see some good performances and get back in the swing of things.
It won’t be too long before the Premier League starts again, so we need to see a little bit of organisation and obviously some good performances and good structure to the team.
It was a good level of game against Udinese, which is what we needed. We’re straight back into it and it was a happy afternoon.
Udinese are a good side and they caused us one or two problems in the early part of the game and scored a goal.
Even up to then, we were creating enough chances and had enough good play in and around their box to give us some encouragement.
Obviously, we got the goal on the stroke of half-time, which was pleasing, then again in the second half we created a lot of chances and got two good goals.
I think scoring goals is a little bit about confidence.
We saw some things today where we were creating chances but maybe not taking advantage of that, and that’s something we feel we have to do better at.
We’ve worked really hard this week on our attacking play, so we’ve just got to keep going. We know we’ve got plenty of attacking players who we know are capable of scoring goals, so we’ve just got to keep believing and keep getting in the right positions and right areas and you could see that part of our play today was good.
Jarrod was a major threat, especially off the back of the disappointment of not going to the World Cup with England.
We know how important Jarrod is to us and I thought he was particularly dangerous today. He had a lot of really good situations and created a couple of goals for us.
We know he’ll come good in terms of goals in the second half of the season, so we’re pleased for him.
We’ve got Fulham at Craven Cottage next and it’s a nice game for me going back there, where I’ve got fond memories of a terrific club.
Hopefully it won’t be so good for them next Saturday as we’ll get a good result, but it’ll be nice to go back!
It is a unique situation at the moment, not just for us but for every club.
None of us know quite how it’s going to work out. We know the type of players we’ve got and we’re pretty confident they’re going to come back and get into the swing of things with some positivity in terms of how their tournaments went.
We’re progressing nicely over the ten days since we’ve been back, so it’s really important we continue that and we’re ready to go on Boxing Day.
