Michail Antonio was thrilled to score his first Premier League goal of the season in Tuesday night’s 3-0 victory against Cardiff City.
The Hammers’ No30 nodded home a Robert Snodgrass corner to notch his side’s third and seal back-to-back victories after Lucas Perez’ double put West Ham 2-0 up.
Antonio might have featured in more advanced positions in recent weeks, but is quite content to fill in at full-back if that’s what it took to end his wait for a league goal.
Now, with Crystal Palace due to visit London Stadium on Saturday, the 28-year-old has set his sights on adding to his tally.
“I’m buzzing to score,” he smiled. “It’s my first Premier League goal of the season and hopefully I can add to the tally now. It’s strange that I’ve been playing up front, right wing, left wing and now I’ve played at right back I get the goal!
“It was lively in the first 15 minutes – we had them pinned in and created quite a few opportunities, but then it kind of died out.
“Then Lucas has come on and scored two quick goals at the start of the second half. From there, we coasted [to the win].”
West Ham needed a penalty save from Lukasz Fabianski to keep the score at 0-0 before the break and Antonio acknowledged that was a key moment in the contest.
“The penalty save was very crucial because this is a solid team who get nine people behind the ball and work together.
“If you score first they have to come out and you might get a few more, but if they score first they’re hard to break down.
“We’ve scored six goals in the last two games now. We didn’t get any points from the first four games this season, so now we’re clawing back those points we missed out on at the start.
“We need to take points from the teams around us in the next few games and see how high we can go in the league."