David Moyes was pleased with the approach of his players to West Ham United's Unmissable Football tour to Western Australia, which concluded with a 3-2 victory over Tottenham Hotspur on Tuesday.
The Irons travelled 9,000 miles to Perth, where they have met thousands upon thousands of West Ham supporters, made lots of new friends and scored nine goals in two exciting pre-season wins.
Six of those came against A-League side Perth Glory on a clear Saturday evening, followed by three more on a chilly, rainy night that reminded Moyes and his players that this is midwinter in the Southern Hemisphere.
Tuesday's game saw an Irons side devoid of its current internationals give up plenty of opportunities to a near full-strength Spurs, who were playing under new Australian manager Ange Postecoglou for the first time.
Showing admirable resilience, and with goalkeeper Łukasz Fabiański in inspired form, West Ham took the lead through first-half headers from Danny Ings and the impressive 18-year-old Divin Mubama.
Spurs roared back and levelled through Giovani Lo Celso's low finish and Destiny Udogie's header, but the men in Claret and Blue would not be denied as Pablo Fornals played in Gianluca Scamacca and the Italian kept his nerve to beat his fellow countryman Guglielmo Vicario and secure a derby victory the Claret and Blue Army Down Under thoroughly enjoyed.
It was an intense game and obviously it wouldn’t have been one we’d have wanted to have so early and wouldn’t have been one we chose, but it was and the boys did a great job.
We had a really weak squad of players in comparison [to Tottenham] and all our international players are back home at Rush Green at the moment, so I’m really pleased the young boys got some playing time and the senior boys who have been out here have done very well.
I thought Lukasz in the two games over here [has been very good] and the goals we have scored have been really important, but Divin does deserve a mention because he makes us different.
He makes us a completely different side with his running, his pressure and the work he does off the ball for the team and we needed it.
We earnt it in the first half and we made a few chances, picked up on their mistakes and played quite well at times, but probably after the first 20-25 minutes they grew into the game.
Look, the squad of players they had out here was ridiculous compared to what we had, so it was really a mismatch, but I have to say we made it look much better than that.
We moan sometimes because he makes something and we wonder ‘What are you trying, Pablo?’ but he is someone who has always come up with a pass or a goal for us in crucial moments.
He made a really crucial pass through for Gianluca to run in and finish.
We gave up an awful lot of chances and they had a lot of opportunities, but it’s down to that we didn’t have enough players here to make changes and they changed the full eleven at half-time and that made it really difficult.
The period we have been here, we’ve enjoyed the people and they’ve been great, I have got to say, and there were a lot of West ham supporters.
There was a great West Ham following here and at the Perth game, and at least they have seen their team win a couple of games.
It is part of the job for football clubs [to come overseas] and you only get it when you are a big club and we need to start making sure we project ourselves in different parts of the world.
It’s just that this year we want all the way to 7 June and it’s made it a really short break and we’ve not been able to bring all our players with us and we’re looking forward to getting back and getting all the squad back together now.
We’ve nearly reversed everything we’ve done [in previous pre-seasons].
We’ve not done too much work. We’ve got on the balls really early and had the games quickly because we’ve had no pre-season training days, so we’ve had to reverse it.
Time will tell when we get back to the Premier League whether it has been a good trip or not [in a training regard], and when we get back we’ll decide if we have got the work done which we should have.
