If Mikey Antonio wasn’t man of the match yesterday he was very close.
Jarrod Bowen and Sean Benrahma would have run him close and at the back Kurt Zouma was immense again – already the Moyes fingerprints on signings are very much on new signings.
Beyond a goal and a typically robust performance, Mikey looks fitter than he has done in a long time and we have everything crossed that he can stay injury free of course.
As was expected – here anyway – his presence was the deciding factor against a Leeds team who weren’t alone in having plenty of problems coping with the main man yesterday.
What was encouraging was that he started out on that long run and goal within the last couple of minutes when he could have been forgiven for being tired.
Instead it was one from a man who looked to have been playing in the role for years and he spoke of his delight afterwards to www.whufc.com.
He said: “I had a few of opportunities before the goal and I didn’t quite manage to take them, but I saw the goalkeeper rushing out, the near post open and I just put it in there. I’m buzzing but I didn’t have the energy to celebrate.”
Ahead of the fixture Antonio noted that he was yet to score against Leeds prior to today’s game.
He added: “I’ve never scored against them. It’s obviously a great achievement to score and I just want to keep going, scoring goals and I think that’s six in six for me now in all competitions, so I just want to keep going and see where I end up at the end of the season.”
The forward was in the thick of the action throughout and was adjudged to have fouled the Leeds goalkeeper after Tomáš Souček thought he’d equalised early in the second period.
“Basically, I’ve jumped up and the hand that I’ve led with has caught the goalkeeper. I honestly don’t think that it’s a foul, but I’ve caught him, he’s gone down, and we’ve scored from it. The referee has made the decision and that’s the decision at the end of the day. We’ve managed to get the three points anyway and we’ll keep going.”
Antonio was also full of praise for Leeds United who battled tirelessly in an entertaining contest.
“They play completely different to the rest of the teams in the league, they play man vs man football. They run all over the pitch and it’s hard to mark because they’ve got people outnumbering you, but we managed to contain it, we had a couple of opportunities that we didn’t take, they took theirs in the first half and fortunately we took ours in the end and won the game.”
The Hammers face yet another busy week ahead with a home double-header, first against Rapid Vienna in the Europa League before Brentford are the visitors to London Stadium on Sunday 2 October.
