Tomáš Souček said he had belief that West Ham United could achieve their 2-0 victory at Newcastle United right from the first minute at St James’ Park.
The Irons arrived in the North-East searching for a first away win in three months but the Czech Republic midfielder was in no doubt that his team’s spirit would see them through.
Souček himself opened the scoring by heading home from Emerson’s corner with ten minutes on the clock, before playing his part in a resolute display that stunted a Magpies side who had won their previous three games.
Aaron Wan-Bissaka struck a second eight minutes into the second half, and from that point on there was no coming back for the home side.
Souček was thrilled with a memorable night on Tyneside.
“It’s a great feeling,” he said. “Honestly I just can say that I had a great feeling from the first minute of the day.
“We did a great warm-up, we were all determined to fight and we said to ourselves that now we're going to fight for ourselves and we did it.
“It was a great performance with a great result so I'm so proud of the team.”
The Hammers did not have to wait long for that inner belief to gain its reward, as Souček found himself free to head the opening goal - our first from a corner this season.
The No28 stressed how important it was to strike first, especially in front of a passionate Toon Army crowd.
“The first goal is always the most important,” he continued. “It can change the whole game and I think it happened today, we finally scored the first goal from the set-piece and now we can start to do more and more because we can see from other teams how important set-pieces are.
"I have to say that Newcastle have great fans, they support incredibly well, but I'm so happy how we dealt with that and I have to say our away fans are amazing.
"Even though they are that far away at the top, we heard them and they helped us so I'm just so happy that we could deliver them the three points because they travelled many hours from London. It's great that we could win."
Now the task for Souček and his teammates is to build on this victory. The 29-year-old is sure that if they can show the same strength at both ends of the pitch, the results will continue to follow.
“Obviously sometimes you have to suffer and block the shots and defend as much as possible, so we did it as a team and then we played great football too,” he added. “I think today we deserve the three points.
“We played a good game, we won and we can be confident for the training sessions when we come back, and for Saturday as well when we play against Arsenal.
“It's a big team but we play at home, we know that we beat them twice last season and we can do it again. This performance can help us, can give us some confidence and I believe that we can win again.”
