David Moyes was thrilled to keep his West Ham United side’s 100 per cent UEFA Europa Conference League record intact with a hard-fought 1-0 victory at RCS Anderlecht on Thursday night.
Gianluca Scamacca’s 79th-minute strike was enough to settle an entertaining game in Brussels and extend the Hammers’ lead at the top of Group B to five points.
Scamacca stepped off the bench along with Lucas Paquetá and Declan Rice with 20 minutes to go – and it was the stellar trio who combined to notch the crucial goal, highlighting the depth now at the manager’s disposal as he tackles tests at home and abroad.
The ability to change tack, both in game and with his starting XI, is delighting the boss, as he explained in his post-match media duties, while Moyes also had words of praise for another of his European regulars, Alphonse Areola, whose late save from Fabio Silva was equally vital...
I’m very pleased with a win and clean sheet away from home.
Anderlecht hadn’t conceded any goals in the group stage previously, so it was always going to be tight. We missed a hatful of opportunities to score and made it a bit scary for ourselves, but overall I thought we deserved the victory.
I don’t think you’re seeing anybody win by big margins in this competition, football throughout Europe is really competitive and it was another tough game tonight.
Alphonse’s save near the end was incredibly crucial.
But let’s be fair, if they had scored then I don’t think [the result] would have been correct. I thought we had done enough to score more on the night.
I have to say, though, he’s playing really well for us and he’s done a great job tonight.
I’m smiling because we’re starting to get a squad of players which we think we can chop and change when we need to.
We think we can use some of them and when you saw the three players we brought on – they’re top players – and it ended up that it made the difference.
I thought Flynn Downes was probably the best player tonight.
He played really, really well. He’s starting to show us a little bit more – he started a little bit slowly, but he’s really put a marker down tomight.
I thought he played very well tonight.
We’re building momentum now.
We want to try and get going – I think the players are beginning to show signs of getting back to form.
We’re beginning to get one or two goals. I think we should be scoring more, but a clean sheet and the team winning is always good.
