Julen Lopetegui led his West Ham United team in paying tribute to Michail Antonio in the aftermath of Monday night’s emotional 2-1 victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Both goalscorers on the night, Tomáš Souček and skipper Jarrod Bowen, are long-time teammates of the Hammers No9, and both celebrated their strikes by dedicating them to Antonio, who is recovering in hospital after undergoing surgery on a lower limb fracture suffered in a road traffic accident at the weekend.
With the 60,000-plus Hammers in attendance doing likewise by regularly chanting the Club’s record Premier League goalscorer’s name, Head Coach Lopetegui was happy his team were able to dedicate a valuable victory to their stricken teammate.
This was a victory for hard work and a resolute mentality, as Lopetegui’s men shrugged off the frustration of not scoring before the interval by moving in front through Souček’s 53rd-minute header, before having to overcome adversity again in seeing Mohammed Kudus’ second ruled out for offside, then having their lead wiped out by Matt Doherty with 69 minutes played.
Parity would only last for three minutes though, before Bowen restored their advantage with a trademark low strike, leaving Lopetegui to reflect on a job well done.
Mick is a very special player, a special guy, we love him a lot and we are very happy to be able to dedicate this victory to him.
It has been a tough few days for a lot of reasons. Today we are happy because we achieved three important points.
It was a very difficult match, as all the matches in the Premier League are, and we overcame different moments in disallowing the goals.
We had a lot of shots, the first very clear chances we had in the first half we didn't take advantage of - we did the same against Leicester and in the end we lost.
Today after we started winning, making it 2-0 was more or less key, so the disallowed goal and them equalising was a trigger moment to be strong in our mentality. I think we did that.
I am happy for the players to have the possibility to dedicate this victory to Mick and his family. They deserve this.
Set-pieces are always key.
We scored from a set-piece in the last match, but we lost that one. Always set-pieces are a very important moment in football and that's why we are happy [that we took advantage of the corner tonight].
Their equaliser was a big knock for us but our reaction was very good.
It was a very good goal for Jarrod and afterwards I think we handled the match well. In the end I think we achieved three points that we deserved.
Above all I think maybe we need to highlight the mentality of the team, the mentality after the equaliser.
Sometimes we can start this kind of week having doubts and thinking that maybe we can lose, so that's why I am happy with the reaction of the team. They showed that they have a strong mentality and this is a good way for the next step.
We are going to work all week looking at the next challenge now.
That is going to be tough too for sure, as Bournemouth are a very, very good team and they are having a very, very good time.
So we have to be ready to go there, to compete and to be able to overcome all the difficulties again as a team. We we have to stay focused for the next challenges.
