Proud Scot David Moyes was able to celebrate St Andrew’s Day 1,275 miles from home after his West Ham United team scored a 1-0 UEFA Europa League Group A win over FK TSC in Serbia.
The Irons secured a top-two finish and progress to the knockout stages of a major European competition for the third season in a row thanks to Tomáš Souček’s late goal.
The Czech’s third winning goal in successive games for the Hammers and fifth strike in successive matches for Club and country was just enough to see off the stubborn challenge of the SuperLiga highfliers in in Bačka Topola.
In truth, West Ham were not at their fluent best, but with Souček on the pitch there was always the chance of a late winner, and so it proved as the midfielder lost his marker and volleyed in substitute Maxwel Cornet’s inswinging right-wing cross.
With SC Freiburg thumping Olympiacos 5-0 in Germany, the Irons now need a draw at home to the Bundesliga side in a fortnight’s time to secure top spot and direct qualification for the round of 16.
Moyes knows victory over Freiburg will not come easy, even if his team have won five of their last six matches in all competitions, but with a big London Stadium crowd behind them, the manager is confident his players can complete the job they set out to do in September.
It is strange that I’m spending St Andrew’s Day in Serbia but, nevertheless, I’ll spread the word over here as well!
To me, it looked as if it would be nil-nil and we weren’t going to score because we weren’t creative enough and we didn’t do enough.
They played five at the back and made it really hard, but I was more disappointed with the first half because we gave them a few chances, which I didn’t like. But, look, as it went on, we limited them to fewer opportunities and we looked like, if we got a chance, we might take one.
We got there in the end. It’s another away win in Europe in the bag and I’ll take that and go back home with it.
I’ve got to say it was a great ball in by Maxi.
It was one of the really disappointing things tonight that I thought the quality of our balls into the box was so poor. Our crossing attempts, whether it be from wide players or full-backs, didn’t come off.
I’m not making excuses, but the balls we’re using in this competition are so light and if you have a light ball with a pitch which isn’t so good, it doesn’t make it so easy, but I would never use it as an excuse, but it’s a reason maybe for the lack of quality at times and not putting in as many good balls.
It was a great ball and Tomáš has got six or seven goals now. He’s getting in the right position and he did it again tonight and we’re thankful he did.
We’re finding our way.
We wanted to give players who haven’t played chances to play. We did that at Olympiacos and we’ve done it tonight, because I want to keep the squad together and keep them fit.
We’re going into a really busy period and I’m going to need some of them to play at different times, so it gives me a chance to see how they are and how they’re performing.
Some of them are going to have to step up and play better, and we know that. It’s a bit easier to be critical when we win than when we lose and we need to play better than we did tonight.
We had some good moments at times, but we never really punctured or threatened them and got our centre forwards in positions to score, so that’s a disappointment.
Let me say, it’s not going to be easy against Freiburg, because that’s not the case.
It’s certainly not been easy qualifying for Europe three years in a row and getting to the latter stages, so if we could win the group, it would be great because it would give us a couple less games in February time.
If you’d said to me at the start of the competition when I saw the group, would I take finishing second in the group and being in Europe, I’d have done that no problem.
We’re still top of the group and I want to stay there so what we need is a big night at the stadium with a big crowd behind us so that we can try and win the group. That would be good.
Some of our fans will be seeing Serbia for the first time, some may come back and some might not!
A big thank you to all of the people who put in an incredible effort to get out here and we head back with a good result.
It wasn’t the best performance for the fans to come and watch, but hopefully the future ones will be better.
