Okay, it wasn’t a great performance today but it was Tomas Soucek again grabbing his fourth goal in four successive games at club an international level, ninth in all and four of them at Premier League level. There are still those who believe Tomas isn’t in quite the same form as when he arrived and they may be right but he is getting there having been allowed to do the job he was bought for in the first place as a goal scoring midfielder. It was Soucek again who came up with a late winner just as he did last weekend against Forest – a wonderful volley from a scintillating Mohammed Kudus centre.
The hosts had the advantage thanks to Jay Rodriguez’s penalty on 49 minutes and looked certain to land their first home win of the season before Soucek decided to enter proceedings after Kudus’ cross was turned in for an own goal by Dara O’Shea under pressure from Divin Mubama. Two minutes into added time, the third goal of the match was scored by West Ham. Another Kudus cross was met superbly by Souček.
Speaking to West Ham TV he said he had told the lads at half time: “Come on guys, we need to do better and keep believing’. We managed that and, because of our spirit and our belief, we won all three points.
“We came out and, within a few minutes, we’d conceded so it was even more difficult. But the last 20 minutes was better for us. We did good pressing and kept the ball, and created a few chances and got a few shots. The last five minutes was even better because we scored two great goals and we won the game.
He continued: “I am very happy. Before the international break, I got the winning goal against Nottingham Forest and then I also got two very important goals for the Czech Republic. I’m so happy that we qualified for the European Championship, because it wasn’t easy and there was pressure on us.
“And then, I’ve come back from internationals and I’ve got another goal, and other winning goal! It’s a perfect thing and I just want to keep working hard and be ready for another game.”
“It’s always difficult after an international break because everyone is somewhere else in the world,” he added. “We had one or two sessions to get ready for Burnley for it’s very difficult for the manager, for us, and for everyone. But we needed to win this game.
“Now we are higher in the table and now we have a long time before the next international break. We have a lot of games now to work towards.
“We’re all together. I’m so happy we won for our fans because we didn’t play well enough going into half-time, and they stayed with us, and after that we scored the goals in front of them which was great. We gave back to them after they supported us through the whole game.”