West Ham United Head Coach Julen Lopetegui believes Sunday's 2-1 Premier League victory over Manchester United can act as a springboard for his team into the winter months.
The Hammers overcame a Casemiro equaliser to secure a second straight home win - and third in a row at London Stadium against the Red Devils - thanks to goals from Crysencio Summerville and Jarrod Bowen.
The visitors were guilty of missing a host of first-half chances - Alejandro Garnacho hit the bar, Diego Dalot failed to hit the target when the goal was open and Casemiro forced a fine save from Łukasz Fabiański - before the goalscoring drama arrived late in the piece.
Half-time sub Summerville broke the deadlock 16 minutes from time, and after the Hammers were pegged back, the Irons came again and were awarded a stoppage time penalty after a VAR check for a Matthijs de Ligt foul on Danny Ings, whose scuffed shot also set up Summerville's opener.
Jarrod Bowen did the rest after a long delay while the visitors complained about referee David Coote's decision, to leave Lopetegui smiling - and sounding a little hoarse - at full-time...
It's always important to win for us, for the players, for the Club and above all for our fans.
This kind of victory against this kind of team is always special. In the end, there are three points more, but it always means more things for the confidence of the players too [to win late on like this].
We were able to overcome bad moments in the first half and were able to keep a positive and good mentality.
In the first half, it was important that we kept a clean sheet.
Obviously, there were some good moments from our goalkeeper, from the defenders and some luck, but 0-0 at half-time, it was a good way to move on.
I was thinking that maybe we could change a few different things [at half-time]. We had two players with a yellow card (Dinos Mavropanos and Lucas Paquetá, who were both replaced). We needed to win more individual fights.
We needed to be more aggressive with our ball. We needed to be more dangerous in [attack]. So, that's why we were thinking about Crysencio in the second half and we put on Tomáš [Souček] and JC [Todibo] too.
They did well, but it's about all the team, so we are happy for them. The mental approach of the players, taking the ball, taking the game to United.
You could feel the energy in the stadium and that worked with the players and the fans and it all came together.
This energy is always special. Sometimes when you go down, they don't allow you to go down. And it's very important to feel this kind of energy from the fans, above all in the bad moments.
It's very, very important that the players feel in the bad moments that the energy of our fans is there and the support too. So, I think that he has been key today for us. And there were a lot of good moments in the second half.
I have to review the match, but I think that we did well in the second half.
We had the opportunity to score the third goal and the second goal before. Very clear [opportunities].
It's true that there were other moments in the match. Unfortunately, we suffered one goal again, but after this goal, we kept a good mentality. I am happy for this.
Sometimes it happens that we go down after one goal and we have to... this is the Premier League. The Premier League doesn't allow you to win matches if you are not able to compete until the end and to overcome bad moments. You have to keep this mentality and be stronger and stronger, always.
The penalty was not easy.
We had a lot of time to decide it under a big pressure.
It is good for Jarrod to be able to overcome this kind of action. We are happy for him.
