David Moyes was a content football manager after West Ham United won through to the Emirates FA Cup fourth round with a hard-fought 1-0 win at Brentford.
In a game played in difficult conditions on a testing pitch, the Hammers held firm to blunt the sting of the in-form Bees and take their place in Sunday's draw.
The only goal of the tie came midway through the second half and came courtesy of super-sub and former Brentford winger Saïd Benrahma, who belted an unstoppable 25-yarder into the net to reward the 2,500 hardy Hammers who braved wind, rain and a train strike to make it to west London.
Speaking to West Ham TV, Moyes hailed an important victory - his team's first in seven matches in all competitions - and the contribution of match-winner Benrahma and his diligent teamates.
It’s an important result for the football club because we’re in the next round of the FA Cup.
We’re into the latter stages in European football as well, so we’ve got a couple of cup competitions we’re still in and let’s hope that continues and we go a long way in both.
I actually thought we played better when we played Brentford last week and lost 2-0 than we did today.
But the biggest thing is that if we didn’t concede any goals and if you don’t concede you’ve always got the chance of scoring from a set piece or from a worldie like we did today through Saïd.
If you lose goals, then it makes it much harder to get back in the game, so it was good. We kept a clean sheet, we kept it tight. They had one or two chances and we did as well, but the game was very tight overall and there was very little between the teams, but we came out on top today.
I thought we did a good job and a lot of the stuff we did quite well.
I’m dizzy that I want to get back to the heights of last year and I want to do it quickly and I want to get back to playing a level and obviously we’re off that level at the moment.
So we’ve had to go back to a period when we had to be hard to beat and grind out games to get there and we did a bit of that today.
From Lucas Paquetá’s point of view, he’s got great ability as a footballer and he’s given us different things.
But I’m saying to him ‘away from home at Brentford and Leeds United, you’re going to have to learn what the Premier League is like and how tough these games are’.
The conditions in the last two games have not been good with the wind [and rain] and I have to say the pitch here today was very, very poor, which didn’t help.
Look, they’re all adapting. Nayef Aguerd was only really playing his second game today, so we’ve got a lot of players adapting, but overall I’m really pleased we’ve got through. It wasn’t the most pleasing way we’ve played, but it doesn’t matter in the cup as you just have to get through.
Saïd could have easily played today, but we just changed a little bit of the system to see if we could find something.
And he has done really well when he has come off the bench, and made an impact. You need impact substitutes who can make the difference and add a little bit more and he’s done that today.
He’s scored a great goal and I’m really pleased for him because he has had moments this season when he’s been needed by us and other moments when he could have done better and he’s got to be a team player and feed his teammates opportunities to score.
But, look, I’m pleased. Dec made a great tackle in midfield and that set us on our way.
I’ve got to say I thought the supporters were great.
When teams are not doing so well, it can be different, but I sense the supporters think ‘there is something going on here’.
It’s maybe not as good as they’d want at the moment, but it’ll not be too long until we’re back in good order.
