Graham Potter was pleased with the application and attitude shown by his injury-hit West Ham United squad in his first game as Head Coach, despite the Hammers exiting the Emirates FA Cup at Aston Villa on Friday evening.
The Irons, who were without Jarrod Bowen, Michail Antonio, Emerson, Jean-Clair Todibo and Alphonse Areola before kick-off, then lost Niclas Füllkrug and Crysencio Summerville to hamstring problems in the first half, nevertheless pushed Villa all the way before going down 2-1.
Potter’s side played with confidence and poise in the first half of their third-round tie and deservedly went in ahead at half-time through Lucas Paquetá’s well-taken goal on nine minutes.
With teenager Ollie Scarles producing a Man of the Match performance on just his fourth first-team appearance at left-back, and the likes of Paquetá, Summerville and Mohammed Kudus carrying a threat, there looked to be a real prospect of West Ham winning through to the fourth round.
But the losses of two influential forwards, combined with a marked improvement in Villa’s own level of performance, saw the home team turn the game around and knock the Londoners out.
Result aside, Potter, who was appointed on Thursday morning and had just one full training session and a few meetings with his newly-inherited squad, was feeling positive about what he saw on the pitch, and is looking forward to further implementing his ideas as he gets to know his players...
The first half was really good.
We scored a good goal, we were organised defensively, showed a great attitude, togetherness on the pitch, good communication, good understanding of what we're trying to do, carried a threat and were probably a little bit unlucky not to get a second goal.
Aston Villa certainly didn't carry any threat in the first half. Obviously losing Niclas was a blow, and then Cree as well at half-time, probably affected our attacking intent.
Credit to Aston Villa, they stepped up as well I think and pushed us back probably a little bit more than we'd have liked, but the boys dug in.
We were a little bit unlucky I think, with the manner of their first goal in terms of it didn't look like it was a corner and it's one of those things. But after going behind, we still pushed and you could see the personality of the players, and you could see what they were trying to do and we had a couple of chances at the end.
So we're disappointed to go out, disappointed to lose, but we'll have to carry the positives forward.
Ollie Scarles came in for his first domestic start and I thought he was really, really good.
He was playing at a difficult place and dealing with Leon Bailey and the overload down that side, so there were lots of positives.
I couldn't have asked for anything more from the preparation of the players, how they applied themselves, how they were open to the ideas and how they tried to carry them out was really, really good.
It was just some executions that of course we're going to get better with but, like I said, overall I think there were positives to the game.
It just doesn't feel very nice at the moment because we're out and we've lost, but we have to stick to the principles, think about those and dust ourselves down and prepare for Fulham, which is a big game.
Niclas doesn't look good. Obviously how he pulled up, it didn't look positive, so I'm not hopeful about that.
Of course you never know, but Cree's was nowhere near as severe as it looked. But it's too early to say. His substitution was more precautionary at half-time as well.
He sort of wanted to half carry on, but it wasn't worth taking the chance, so to lose two of your front four, with no disrespect to anybody coming on, made it difficult, but it's just how it is.
You just have to readjust and again, for effort and application, I can't fault the players. And also how they've gone about their work over the last two days with us has been really, really first class, so that's really encouraging.
We just have to take the disappointment, learn from it and then prepare for Tuesday.
The supporters were brilliant.
We had a great number here and they were loud and I think they were enjoying the first half and enjoying what we were trying to do. I think they could see the chances we were creating and the threat that we carried, and the overall effort. I think we just ran out of steam a little bit in the second half, but overall their support was brilliant.
So I’m really, really happy with that. It's the first day essentially for us, it's a training session and a meeting or two, so we need to keep moving, but we've got games coming up so there's not that much time to prepare between them.
We just need to carry on with the ideas and keep working with the players.
