By Hughie Southon
West Ham United now face Dutch side AZ Alkmaar in the semi final of the Conference due in large part to fabulous goals from Mikey Antonio and a sensational one from Declan Rice.
Antonio’s 37th-minute header from a Jarrod Bowen free kick was a great goal but his second when he strode forward from inside the Gent half to hammer hone the second set the London Stadium rocking.
It hadn’t started well for the striker as the Belgian outfit dominated the first half but the equaliser started to turn things around big time before the No 9 went on to take his goals tally to the season to 11.
At his best – as Tony Gale once commented – he is among the best strikers in the Premier League and last night he eventually became far too hot to handle for the Belgians.
And afterwards he said: “We made hard work of it last week and again today going 1-0 down, but we always believed in ourselves and it was a good victory in the end.”
“How it started off and how it ended, the boys are buzzing. Today was a day when you could see the confidence started oozing from us in the second half, with how we pressed them and the goals we scored.”
They retained the necessary belief to turn the tie back in their favour and Gent could not live with their second half display.
“The manager said at half-time that we were playing well, but one slack moment in defence and we managed to concede,” he continued.
“But he said to go out there and just keep on playing how we’re playing. Going forward we were making mistakes, but we just had to settle down and make sure we found our players in the final third.
“That’s what we did to be fair, we went out there and started pressing them constantly. We were getting on their toes – the chances started dropping for us and we took them.”
The striker is determined to step out onto the pitch at the Eden Arena in Prague for the final on 7 June.
“Our plan is to get to the final and we just want to build up momentum to get there, so we need to keep winning games – that’s winning in the Premier League, winning in Europe, because obviously to get to the final you have to keep winning,” he added.
“We’re in the semi-finals two years running, that’s a difficult task on it’s own, so hopefully this year we can win it.
“The feeling we got last year [losing the semi-final] was awful so hopefully we don’t have to feel that again. We believe. We believed last year that we would go on to win it, this team believes we will [go one better]. We will go out there, give it our all and hopefully we can keep playing the way we are now.”