Tomáš Souček is looking for another hard-fought and tenacious West Ham United performance when Wolverhampton Wanderers visit London Stadium.
The Irons have lost just one match in their last eight in all competitions, an impressive run that continued Thursday evening when Souček and his teammates earned a 2-0 win over SC Freiburg in UEFA Europa League Group A.
The victory against the Bundesliga opposition puts the Hammers through to the round of 16 of the European competition as group winners, and Souček was satisfied with how the team performed, not just on Thursday, but throughout their Group A campaign.
“It was important for us to get through,” the midfielder said. We wanted to be first in the group and that makes it much easier. We’re one round further through now and we’re happy with our performance too. We played a good team in Freiburg and did very well.
“I know West Ham fans appreciate our wins. They will remember our UEFA Europa Conference League win for many, many years. I know some people might say we were favourite to win our group but every team we played against in the group was difficult. It showed in the Champions League, with two English teams going out. It’s not easy and we did a really good job to finish top of the group.”
The hectic December schedule now sees Gary O’Neil’s Wolves travel to east London for what will be West Ham’s fifth match of December already. It is a run that sees Souček and the squad play eleven times in 38 days in all competitions, and the 28-year-old knows the coming matches will play a pivotal role in defining West Ham’s season.
After Wolves is a Carabao Cup quarter-final away to Liverpool before a home test against Manchester United in league action. It has the potential to set up a very happy Christmas for the Hammers.
“In general, our results recently have been really good,” he continued. “We know Fulham was a bad performance but we’re very happy we bounced back quickly with a good game and result against Freiburg. We now have three games between now and Christmas, all of which will be really hard matches.
“We will need to be disciplined and we need to make sure we’re ready for the Wolves games. Having games every three days is difficult, but we have a really good team. We need to make sure we concentrate, work hard, and hopefully we can pick up the results that mean a very good Christmas.”
Thursday’s win was a third year in a row that the Hammers secured top spot in a European group and, while the team wants to progress through the UEFA Europa League knock-out stages, Souček is also eager to ensure the Hammers continue playing on the European stage in the seasons to come.
“For me, being in Europe is a massive thing,” he added. “When I was in the Czech Republic, we wanted to always be in European competitions. West Ham hadn’t been in Europe for a long time when I came to the Club but now we’re really enjoying our time in Europe.
“It’s been a good few years in a row. We won the competition last year, and we want to keep it going.”
