Dinos Mavropanos

Mavropanos: We have plenty positives to take forward

Konstantinos Mavropanos was feeling down but far from out after West Ham United’s home Premier League draw with Aston Villa on Sunday.

The Hammers got themselves in front through Michail Antonio’s first league goal since August before Nicolò Zaniolo's strike pegged the hosts back with eleven minutes to play.

David Moyes’ charges had a second ‘goal’ disallowed within three minutes of the restart when Bowen’s corner caused chaos in the visitors’ box and the ball went in off Antonio, only for Video Assistant Referee Tony Harrington to rule it had hit the forward's arm.

And the Irons' frustration levels rose late on when Mavropanos thought he had helped West Ham win the game six minutes into stoppage time, after getting on the end of James Ward-Prowse's in-swinging free-kick but it was ruled out for handball by Tomáš Souček after a five-minute VAR check.

“At the end we are disappointed with the result because we had two disallowed goals, but we can be happier as we worked very hard, and we are going to better the result in the next game,” said the Greek.

We are disappointed because when you are disallowed two goals you will have a bad feeling, but I think we can be happy because we qualified for the quarter-finals [of the UEFA Europa League] and today we showed character that we will look to build on
Dinos Mavropanos

“It is a little bit [nervy] and when it [a VAR decision] takes so long, we are all waiting for one decision. It is what it is, they have to check everything and make sure that the decision they make is right.

“I don’t really know [about the second goal] as I didn’t see it clearly enough yet, so I don’t have any opinion about it, but they made the decision they believe is right.

West Ham have a late goal disallowed against Aston Villa
Mavropanos watches on as the ball heads over the line for the Hammers' late disallowed goal

“I think we worked really hard and in the second half we maybe went a little bit deeper, though I thought we did well and made some good clearances.

"They had one counter-attack, and we didn’t manage to keep it out the net.

"We will take the positives from today and keep going."

 

Leverkusen