Sharing Saturday’s Premier League victory over Brighton & Hove Albion was a special moment to share with the West Ham United fans for manager David Moyes.
The Seagulls have proven something of a bogey team for the Irons in recent history. The Hammers had never beaten the South Coast side in the Premier League and were 12 wins without a victory against them.
Until Saturday.
It was a case of lucky number 13 as James Ward-Prowse, Jarrod Bowen and Michail Antonio fired West Ham not only to victory, but also to the top of the Premier League table!
While Pascal Groß grabbed a consolation for the hosts on 80 minutes, the visitors stood strong – while Alphonse Areola made a host of fantastic saves – to pick up the win at the Amex.
After years of disappointment against Brighton, manager Moyes was thrilled to give the Claret and Blue Army a match to savour against the side, while also hailing his team’s quality of goals…
I didn’t know we were top of the league!
Someone in the dressing room just told me and it’s a great feeling at the moment. The more important thing, though, is that we’ve come and won at Brighton!
We’ve had some dark days here and we ended up in the UEFA Europa Conference League that year we lost in the second half here a couple of seasons ago, which may have been a good thing in the end. So we’ve had disappointing days here and the supporters are always worried about watching the game here. It’s great to get rid of those days and give the supporters this victory.
We had a game plan coming here.
I wouldn’t say it was perfect because I wouldn’t wanted them to have so many opportunities, and I’d have liked us to have more of the ball, but the game plan was to not chase the ball. We were going to wait on them and we had to, because of how Brighton play. My job was to try and get a victory today.
We knew they might be susceptible on the counter-attack and we’re looking sharp in that regard. Michail Antonio is hitting a bit of form and Saïd Benrahma has been good too. I wanted it to be different this time we were here, so we could cause them different problems, and we made it harder for them to score past us today.
The goals were really brilliant.
They were really top finishes. James Ward-Prowse, on the break, gets his first goal for us. Then Micky and Jarrod got two goals, and people who watch us regularly know what they can do. I thought Jarrod’s take was brilliant. He had brilliant control and it was a brilliant finish.
I’m really pleased that we could give the fans this result.
The players are doing such a good job and the way they’re going about their work is brilliant. We’re just back from Prague a few weeks ago, and we’ve been away from home with some difficult games, and this one is always horrible. So I really appreciate the support and backing because it will make us all better.
We now want London Stadium to be really rocking now every time we play there because we’ve got a lot to be positive about.
Edson Álvarez ran out of gas a little bit, but he was great.
He played 80 minutes and he’s only really been back for two weeks, so to come into the Premier League and get used to that is something. He might take a little bit of recovery.
Alphonse has also been fantastic. We have another brilliant goalkeeper in Łukasz Fabiański but we felt it was the right time to give Alphonse the chance to wrestle it away from Łukasz, and he’s not disappointed.
I can’t believe we’re top of the league!
I’ve just said to the players that the challenge now is to keep fighting, keep pushing, and challenge each other. I remember three years ago, before we got in Europe and we were in Scotland for pre-season, and I said to the players about getting into Europe. That was our goal. I’ve told them we need to challenge the top teams this year, so we’ll see what we can do.
