Mohammed Kudus is loving life as a Hammer.
Two goals in Sunday’s 3-0 Premier League victory against Wolverhampton Wanderers took his tally since joining from Ajax in August to nine – and four in the month of December alone.
Both of Sunday’s strikes were laid on in the opening period by Lucas Paquetá, with the first coming from a quick break on 23 minutes, which the No14 lashed low into Dan Bentley’s near post.
The second arrived just nine minutes later, as Kudus showed his pace to get away from former Hammer Craig Dawson and finish calmly.
The Ghana attacker revealed that the goals came naturally in their action, with much of the work already done on the training pitch.
“I am loving my football, but most importantly the performances are impacting on the results,” he said. “We got the three points and that’s the most important thing for me.
“[For the first goal] normally when you come in with your left foot, the keeper is looking at the other corner, so I went for the near corner. It went in, it was a good goal and I’m happy.
“Before the game I had the information from the technical team that when I come inside, I should shoot for the near corner because he’s more expecting the balls on the other corner.
“It was in the back of my head, so when [the chance came] it was a natural flow.
“[For the second] you know the vision Lucas has with those kind of passes. As soon as we win the ball and it’s him, I just get running!
“I know the ball will come. I was just one-v-one against the keeper and I did my thing.”
Following that opening half double salvo, the Irons saw off a mini-rally from the visitors – which included a Pablo Sarabia goal which was disallowed by VAR Jarred Gillet for offside – before Jarrod Bowen made the points safe.
“We needed the third goal to really kill the game off,” Kudus continued. “It was a beautiful goal from Jarrod and I’m not surprised with his finishing quality.
“We support each other a lot, during the ups and the downs. You can see the togetherness and that helps a lot. Even the lads who are not playing are very supportive as well.
“It’s credit to everyone around the team. We keep building on that and we’re focused on Wednesday now.”
Kudus was, of course, referring to the midweek Carabao Cup quarter-final tie at Liverpool, and he, like the entire Hammers team, is focused on keeping their trajectory pointing upwards.
“We want to keep going and keep going,” he added. “The win on Thursday boosted the energy and the motivation and we’ll keep building on that.
“We expect a lot from ourselves and we believe we can do more than this. There are so many games to go, so we’ll keep taking one game at a time and we’ll get there.
“Wednesday is a very important opportunity to go to the next round – the semi-final. You saw the performance against Arsenal. It will be another tough game, but the boys will be up for it and the win today is another boost for us. We’ll give our best any day.”
