Graham Potter had praise for every player in a White and Claret shirt after his West Ham United side put in a real shift to claim a well-deserved 1-1 draw at Aston Villa on Sunday afternoon.
With six senior players missing due to injury, several members of the Hammers squad had to adopt unfamiliar roles to help the team at Villa Park, and their endeavours were rewarded with Emerson’s second-half leveller.
The Irons had to dig deep after a fast Villa start, which yielded Jacob Ramsey’s early opening goal, but having weathered the storm, Potter’s men regrouped and mustered an impressive response.
Emerson had already gone close to an equaliser - along with Lucas Paquetá - in a second half which his side had taken on the front foot, before his goal did come, getting on the end of Edson Álvarez’s cross with a powerful far-post header.
It meant the Hammers had a point to take back home down the M6 and M1, and Potter was delighted with his side’s performance.
We’re really pleased with the performance.
We just got caught in a couple of actions early on and then we had to suffer a little bit, but from then on I thought we were really, really good.
The reaction to their goal was great, we pushed and pushed second half, created some really good chances, played with personality, played with effort, so it was really good.
The two boys up front gave everything and everyone stepped up.
It starts from Lucas [Paquetá]. Mo [Kudus] and Carlos [Soler] helped the midfield out, the lateral centre-backs help the midfield out, and the midfield help the team out, so it was a good team performance, it really was.
I think that's something we've been trying to reinforce all the time. We have to be a team, we have to be hard to beat, we have to be compact and if we can attack fast, we attack fast, but if not then we have to feel that we can keep the ball and I thought we did both of those things.
We spoke at half-time for Emerson just to be a little bit more positive with his movement, which he did in the second half.
He threatened the backline really well and then the goal was really well-worked.
Obviously we looked for that overload in the back area and we did, it was great execution, but I think it was a reward for a really good performance.
The players enjoyed it, I think our fans enjoyed it, and it was just a performance that was full of personality. It’s sort of where we want to get to.
All the subs were really good.
I think it just shows that everyone's ready. Everyone wants to play, but obviously you can only select eleven and then the ones that are coming on, they've got to be ready to play and they were, so that's really pleasing.
It’s a good day, a good point, good performance. We'd probably have liked three [points], but that just shows the level of performance we had.
We had a really busy first week, three games in eight days and this week was a good positive week for us and I think that's the foundation for us to go forward.
We have to prepare well, train well, which the boys have done, so we need to recover now and get ready for another tough game at Chelsea next week.
