Michail Antonio is usually value in interviews but even the joker in the Hammers pack is struggling this time round by the look of things.
The Wolves defeat has – as is always the case after the various defeats this season – trawled over and examined from every angle.
It makes no difference of course – three more lost points – followed by words which neither help or genuinely explain the problem beyond what we already understand fully well.
Only Issa Diop got to the point when explaining we were second best and that doesn’t do much to raise hopes for the next game.
We can all see the problems – they don’t need explaining – and although it’s occasionally nice to hear some explanations they have usually cone from a couple of sources…Zaba and the boy Diop with help here and there from Fabianski.
Oddly, by his standards, Michail starts his loook back at Wolves with some fairly bland views which come as no surprise and barely need saying before bringing some hope for tonight’s game.
Talking at https://www.whufc.com/news/articles/2020/june/23-june/michail-antonio-we-know-we-have-quality-required he said: It’s not the start that we wanted. It’s just one of those things where so many different things happened in the game – no crowds, it’s just the way you’re prepping the game is quite different – but we’ve obviously got to get used to it and we’ll build on it.
“Because there are so many changes, the feel of the game is different. I’ve played football for 12 years now, and to walk out on the field and have no fans there…
“Before the game, there’s usually so much noise and music playing, things that make it feel more of a vibe going on, but now, as soon as the whistle goes, it’s just complete silence. All you can hear is the boys on the pitch, so it is quite weird, but because we’ve now played the first game you kind of get used to it.
“Now that there are no fans to push you, you’ve got to be professional and drive yourself. As the game goes along, you kind of just get used to the feel of the game. Now we’ve got that out of the way, we can move forward to face Tottenham.”
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“Even though we lost the game, Wolves are kind of like a bogey team for us where things have never really gone our way against them.
“Because we believe we can compete against teams like Tottenham and Chelsea, we aren’t disheartened. We believe we can go out and do things over the next couple of games.
“It’s never been this close. We’re normally manage to pull ourselves out of it, but eight games to go and we’re still in and around it. We still believe in ourselves and know we’ve got the quality and the players to get ourselves out of it, so that’s what we’re going to do.
“I feel that we’ll be able to pull ourselves out of it, especially with the upcoming games. When we play Tottenham, we always have a good game against them, and Chelsea… and then we’ve got teams in and around us: Watford, Norwich and Aston Villa. We’ve just got to make sure we get the points.”
He’s aware of his own form against Sours saying: “I do get a couple of goals against this team! The first away goal at the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, so I put my name in history there. I can’t really complain can I?!
“Obviously they have quality players, but we can’t worry about what players they have and have back, because the majority of our players are fit now. I feel that we’ve got enough, and these are the players who are going to go out there and do the job – because we need to do the job.
“Any game against Tottenham where we’re involved is massive. Over the few years we’ve managed to get some decent results against them, so hopefully we can turn everything around and start building from the game.”
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