We have all been talking about him. Now Mohammad Kudus speaks for himself and what his early Hammers performances have meant to him. It seems impossible to believe that this amazing footballer joined the club for a mere £38 million – mere in footballing terms of course and for that we have the new technical director Tim Steidten to thank who convinced him that there was room for both him and Lucas Paqueta in the starting line up when negotiating for his signature. Now he and the Brazilian have become the heroic duo of recent West Ham performances which have us all on the edge of our seats whenever the are on the ball.
Kudus’ two goals against Wolves were mini masterpieces with the Brazilian doing his thing before the pair of them sat on the the advertising hoardings in front of the miserable visiting fans. Beautiful stuff. Afterwards the No 14 spoke on what his move to the Irons is meaning to him declaring: “I am loving my football, but most importantly the performances are impacting on the results. We got the three points and that’s the most important thing for me.
“[For the first goal] normally when you come in with your left foot, the keeper is looking at the other corner, so I went for the near corner. It went in, it was a good goal and I’m happy.
“Before the game I had the information from the technical team that when I come inside, I should shoot for the near corner because he’s more expecting the balls on the other corner. “It was in the back of my head, so when [the chance came] it was a natural flow.
“[For the second] you know the vision Lucas has with those kind of passes. As soon as we win the ball and it’s him, I just get running! I know the ball will come. I was just one-v-one against the keeper and I did my thing.”
Following that opening half double salvo, the Irons saw off a mini-rally from the visitors – which included a Pablo Sarabia goal which was disallowed by VAR Jarred Gillet for offside – before Jarrod Bowen made the points safe.
“We needed the third goal to really kill the game off,” Kudus continued. “It was a beautiful goal from Jarrod and I’m not surprised with his finishing quality.
“We support each other a lot, during the ups and the downs. You can see the togetherness and that helps a lot. Even the lads who are not playing are very supportive as well.
“It’s credit to everyone around the team. We keep building on that and we’re focused on Wednesday now.”
He added: “We want to keep going and keep going. The win on Thursday boosted the energy and the motivation and we’ll keep building on that. We expect a lot from ourselves and we believe we can do more than this. There are so many games to go, so we’ll keep taking one game at a time and we’ll get there.
“Wednesday is a very important opportunity to go to the next round – the semi-final. You saw the performance against Arsenal. It will be another tough game, but the boys will be up for it and the win today is another boost for us. We’ll give our best any day.”