Julen Lopetegui felt his West Ham United side earned the slice of good fortune they got to defeat AFC Bournemouth 1-0 and advance to the Carabao Cup third round.
The Hammers and Cherries looked set to need a penalty shootout to settle their second-round tie at London Stadium, where both teams missed a number of opportunities to open the scoring.
Crysencio Summerville went closest for the Irons, skying one effort and curling a second narrowly wide, while Jarrod Bowen was denied by a flying Neto save late on.
Bournemouth were left to rue two chances wasted by substitute Evanilson, while Łukasz Fabiański made fine saves to keep out efforts from Dango Ouattara and Marcus Tavernier.
Then, with two minutes of the 90 to play, Bowen exchanged passes with Lucas Paquetá and the ball dropped to Mohammed Kudus, whose shot deflected off the captain and past Neto into the visitors’ net.
While the goal itself may have been a bit lucky, the Head Coach instead focused on the hard work his players – four of whom were making their first starts for the Club – put in to keep a clean sheet and set the platform for the late winner.
That clean sheet was kept despite losing Aaron Cresswell in the warm-up to a hamstring injury, necessitating full debutant Aaron Wan-Bissaka to move to left-back and Vladimír Coufal to be drafted into the starting XI.
West Ham’s reward for a hard-fought victory is a trip to Liverpool in the third round, which will be played on either Tuesday 24 or Wednesday 25 September at Anfield.
The important thing is that we are into the next round.
We came up against a very good team, who gave us some difficulties. We suffered but it’s the only way that I know to go forward, suffering and being able to overcome a very good team.
[It was] not luck, as you have to work very hard to have this luck. Sometimes you are a little lucky, but in the end the team is ready to suffer, to run, to fight and take advantage of our strengths.
Of course, we have to improve but I prefer to keep the good things, and today the good things for sure is that we overcame a very good team.
They had clear chances, we did too, but in the end fortunately we scored, we won and it’s us to go forward.
It’s very important to keep another clean sheet. That allows you to be closer to win always.
We have to insist on this. We have to improve other things for sure, but we are happy with the clean sheets and we have to keep on with that.
Today has been a very demanding match, physically, and unfortunately we had a problem in the warm-up with Cress with his hamstring.
We had to make a change, but in the end we overcame all of these difficulties as a team.
It’s the first match that Edson has played for three months. It was not easy for him and it’s good for him that step by step he gets closer to his best way.
For other players it was their first match they played in our stadium, and I repeat it was not easy against this team.
The first [task] is to recover as soon as possible, because Manchester City did not play this midweek.
They are going to be ready and we have to recover to be ready to face a very difficult match.
We have to think right now about the next challenge for sure.
