West Ham cruised into the Europa Conference League last 16 as group winners, after a 1-0 win against Silkeborg confirmed their qualification with a game to spare.
Manuel Lanzini’s 24th-minute penalty was enough to secure victory for the Irons, following goalkeeper Nicolai Larsen’s foul on Michail Antonio.
The game was in West Ham’s control throughout but failing to double their advantage created a nervous ending.
However, David Moyes‘ side did more than enough for the three points and to retain their perfect start in the competition.
Hammers frontman Antonio was pleased with the result — but felt his side could have been more clinical in attack.
He said: “I feel going forward we could have been a little bit better but it is a good professional win at the end of the day and we have done the job.”
The striker added: “The only goal we scored was by a penalty and for the football that we were playing, we probably should have scored more in open play.
“The keeper pulled off some good saves and a defender saved one off the line so on another day we could have got three.
“So we’ve got to take the positives, we got the win, and did the job that needed to be done.”
Reflecting on the first-half penalty that he won, Antonio continued: “Yeah, there was a little bit of contact but obviously in that situation he [Larsen] should not be giving me a choice to go down.”
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Moyes has overseen a perfect start to West Ham’s Europa Conference League campaign — and the Scottish tactician had his say on why the East Londoners could not get a second goal.
He said: “You could simply put it down to poor finishing.
“I think we gave the ball away, I think we made wrong decisions in the final third, didn’t weight some passes correctly, didn’t make the cut-back well enough, didn’t pick the cross out well enough.
“Saying that, we still had chances, we had two or three players that probably should’ve got us a goal.”
Defender Nayef Aguerd finally made his West Ham debut, after picking up an injury in pre-season — and Moyes reflected on the Moroccan’s first outing.
“What I will say is it was the perfect game to come back, it was a really good game for him. There wasn’t an awful lot of contact which meant he could play the game, control the ball,” he explained.
“You could see he was flagging just after the 60th minute and we took him off.”
Source: Livescore