David Moyes hailed another ‘incredible’ result after West Ham United defeated Leicester City 3-2 to climb back into the Premier League’s top four.
The Irons roared into a three-goal lead for the third game in a row, with Jesse Lingard scoring two more fine goals and Jarrod Bowen netting his third in three matches, before having to hold off a late Foxes fightback.
West Ham lost Aaron Cresswell and Mark Noble to injury, while Wilfried Ndidi escaped a second yellow card for a foul on Bowen, and Leicester took advantage of those factors, and some uncertain defending, to set up a grandstand finish through two Kelechi Iheanacho strikes.
But the Hammers held on to make it 16 Premier League wins for the season, move onto 55 points and, with seven games to play, remain above the likes of Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool in the table.
I’m not smiling. This one is a stick-on smile today. This is a smile of anger because we nearly threw away another big three points for us and we don’t want to do that.
We were 3-0 up against Arsenal and 3-0 up against Wolves and 3-0 up against Leicester and they’re incredible results, but they don’t sound that incredible when it goes 3-3, 3-2, 3-2.
I’ve got to try and put an end to that. I can’t allow that to happen and we’ve got to be better.
We played well for the opening 60 minutes and we have a good team and at the minute we’re without a couple of our main players as well, so to get the results we’re getting is incredible.
It just felt a bit harder later on when we didn’t have a lot of options off the bench so we could try and change things around.
We’re just short of midfield players at that time late on, but I’m thrilled we got the result and once I settle down have a glass of red wine tonight I’ll be much happier.
I want the standards to be higher and not conceding two goals a game and needing to score three and we have to stop that.
We had to alter things a wee bit the way we played Jesse and Jarrod and give ourselves a different sort of look, because when we’re without Mick [Antonio] we don’t have that different sort of player.
But it didn’t stop them getting goals and it just shows you the way the boys are going.
Look, we’ve got a great bunch of players and the boys coming off the bench do a great job for us as well – maybe not so much today, but in the main they’ve done a great job for us.
I didn’t feel pressure today. I felt we’re in a really good position.
We’ve got games coming up later this season where we might think ‘we should win these games and we’re expected to win them’ and they’ll be more pressure.
Today, we were playing against a team above us in the league and we’ve gone a point behind Leicester. That’s big, because Leicester are a really good team and for 60 minutes we did really well against them.
I’ve always wanted good football.
I was brought up at Celtic where you need to play well and it meant you needed to score goals and be attack minded and I’ve always got that in my background.
I’m also someone very conscious that we need to be organised and good enough defensively to win games, so I’ve got to balance that.
At the moment we’re getting the goals, but I’ve got to make sure we stop conceding them.