David Moyes was beaming with pride after seeing his West Ham United side secure a vital 2-1 Premier League victory at Burnley.
Not only did the Hammers manager get his team selection and tactics spot on, but his players also recovered from going a goal down in horribly wet and windy conditions to take win very hard-earned points at Turf Moor.
Chris Wood’s early penalty put the Irons down but far from out as first the returning Michail Antonio powered in a header from Vladimir Coufal’s cross to equalise within three minutes, then the centre-forward diverted Said Benrahma’s wicked curling cross past Nick Pope to put his side in front before the half-hour mark.
West Ham’s interplay was outstanding all evening, with Benrahma, Jesse Lingard, Pablo Fornals and Manuel Lanzini, who excelled in a deep-lying midfield role alongside Tomas Soucek, pulling Burnley all over the place, while the back four and goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski resisted virtually everything Sean Dyche’s direct side could launch at them.
The result was a record-breaking eighth away Premier League win of the season and a victory that saw Moyes’ men climb back above Tottenham Hotspur into fifth place – just three points behind Chelsea in fourth – with four games left to play.
While there is plenty of work still to be done over the closing three weeks of the 2020/21 season, the manager could afford himself a smile as he spoke to West Ham TV...
We played really well. We’re a different team now with a different mentality and I think the players showed that in abundance.
Their football was terrific but so was their character. They showed they wouldn’t be pushed around and be ‘Burnleyed’, if you want to call it that, because you can come here and Burnley can really do you in.
I remember coming here when I was out of work after I left the job the first time and watched Burnley batter us a year or so ago, but that wasn’t the case tonight.
We never deserved to go a goal down in the first place.
We got back in the game quickly and we thoroughly deserved to win, and our football deserved many more goals than we got tonight.
I thought we moved the ball well at times and the boys are in really good physical condition at the minute.
We’re obviously missing a few players through injury but the ones who are playing at the moment are putting a fantastic shift in.
You’ve got to think Micky came back in after injury, Manu hadn’t played for a long time and we had Said coming in as well, and Cressy has been out for a couple of weeks, so there were quite a few changes but the team played really well.
Mick really made a difference and we needed his desire to score that equaliser so quickly after we had fallen behind.
I just keep saying it, but I cannot believe the amount of chances we gave up to go 3-1 up or go on and get a fourth goal or a fifth goal, and that made it a bit hairy at the end, but overall it was good.
Good teams don’t lose three games in a row and we had to make sure that didn’t happen tonight and credit to the players because we were good tonight and they know it.
They’ve been training great, they’re in good nick and if we can get the boys back from injury we can give ourselves every chance of trying to keep this run going.
The fans will have enjoyed it because we did, so now we’ll get back to London and prepare for the next game at home to Everton on Sunday.
