Pards' Perfect Night

ALAN Pardew described the 4-0 demolition of Aston Villa as a perfect night for the Hammers, as they dominated the clash from start to finish and capped off the evening with a Marlon Harewood hat-trick and Yossi Benayoun's first goal for the Club.

Pards explained afterwards that the performance against Villa had stemmed from one of the best training ground displays he had ever witnessed from a team on the day before the match.

"Sunday's training was the best session I have ever witnessed from a team as a manager or player," explained Pards. "It was unbelievable, and I thought that if we play that way against Villa the following day then we'd have a great chance.

"Everyone was terrific and the energy from the players was amazing. The signs were certainly there from the players that we could put in a performance. But it is never a guarantee as any manager will tell you, so I was delighted to see the team go out and give a performance like that.

"It was a perfect night for us."



Pards was delighted with the overall display of his team, admitting that each player had played his part in what was one of the best performances by a Hammers side during Alan Pardew's reign as manager.

"Everyone was great for us," he said. "The back four were magnificent again and gave us a great platform to build on going forward. The midfield was full of energy and up front we were looking dangerous every time we went forward.

"We worked extremely hard and really forced the issue against a good team.

"Again we played a really open game, perhaps a bit more open than we would have liked at times.

"But to do that you have to have good individual players in your defence and we certainly have that. The likes of Anton Ferdinand, Danny Gabbidon and Paul Konchesky were outstanding, but if I had to pick one of the back four as the best on the night it would have to be Tomas Repka.

"Tomas has taken criticism in the past, but everything he did against Villa was outstanding.

"Their front two have pace and guile, so to keep a clean sheet against them was a really good effort."

Pards has now guided his team to seventh in the table after just four Premier League matches, and as he points out, there has been plenty of entertainment in what has been a fantastic start to the season. 

"It's nose bleed time," he laughed, "but two clean sheets in four Premier League games is a great achievement.

"Any West Ham fan that has seen the four games will have said that we've given out a fair bit of entertainment as well, so it's so far so good.

"The enthusiasm is great, everyone is flying about in training and now we just want to keep it going with the visit to Fulham on Saturday."