Jose’s verdict on West Ham

‘Great spirit, great football’ – Jose Mourinho was delighted with victory in his first game as our Head Coach at West Ham on Saturday.

We dominated for 70 minutes and led 3-0 beforeWest Ham staged a late comeback with goals from Michail Antonio and Angelo Ogbonna to close the scoreline to 3-2.

However, the points were only going back to N17 after our commanding first half display where we led 2-0 through Heung-Min Son and Lucas Moura. Harry Kane added the third four minutes into the second half – his 175th goal for the Club, moving up to third on his own in our all-time goalscoring list.

Jose said: “You have to look to the conditions, national team players – one arrived Monday, one arrived Tuesday, another one Wednesday, another yesterday - new manager, a little bit of new ideas, of course, I select the information, the ideas and the work, but it’s still different. The emotions related to that.

“I think the added pressure of not winning a Premier League match away, it’s normal you cannot perform the best way for 90 minutes but even in difficult periods you could see sacrifice, you could see players wanted to do it for the team, Moussa and Danny in physical problems with injuries but they stayed on the pitch because we had no more changes to make.

“So, great spirit, great football, I’m so happy with what we did in the positional and dynamic point of view, especially in possession.

“West Ham is a good team, lots of players with experience, it’s not like we played a team without quality. We had the feeling of the derby, it’s not easy and we faced that.

“At the end of the game I didn’t want to go to our fans as I felt I shouldn’t, it’s about the players, not about me, so apologies for that. I stayed away but I appreciate a few thousand were there and right behind the team, enjoying and understanding and supporting - now they are as happy as we are.”

Jose promised passion last week and it was certainly there after Lucas scored the second goal, Jose sunk to his knees in delight on the touchline.

He added: “It was great. It’s not just passion – we did something that we did in training, Lucas arrived in a position as a consequence of a dynamic we did in training and for a coach, for my staff, we thought about it, we prepared it, we trained it and when it happens, that’s the best feeling a coach can have.”