Said Benrahma
West Ham assistant manager Alan Irvine spoke to the press following his sides FA Cup win over Doncaster Rovers here is every word he had to say …
On the performance …
Alan Irvine said “Fantastic to get through, fantastic to get a clean sheet, and to score four goals. Great to be able to give three young lads the chance to make their debuts and lovely to see one of them scoring in a game we knew would be a tricky game because Doncaster have played extremely well recently, but everything went very very well for us.”
On Said Benrahma …
Alan Irvine said “Along with everybody else Said played very very well and it would have been nice for him to have topped that off with a goal. He was obviously keen with a couple of free-kicks there towards the end and the sooner he can get that first goal the better.”
The club’s striker search …Alan Irvine said “The most important thing is if we are bringing somebody in then it is the right person we bring in and I don’t think you should sign someone for the sake of it. It was great to see that Yarmolenko can play in that position if we need him to, it’s a bit early for ‘Dapo (Afolayan) in terms of where his career is at the moment but lovely for him to get what he got today. Certainly, it was very encouraging the way Yarmo performed, he has played there before and we know the ability he has got and we know that if we get him through in those kinds of situations one v one with the goalkeeper he is a very very good finisher.”
Being hard to beat …
Alan Irvine said “We certainly needed to address the number of goals we were conceding. Last season if the league table had been based on goals conceded then we would have been relegated and that clearly isn’t good so we had to make sure that stopped and that has stopped and fortunately we have been scoring goals as well. It is good at the moment but it has taken a lot of hard work to get to where we are just now and it will take an awful lot of hard work to continue that as well.”
On Benrahma’s search for a goal …
Alan Irvine said “It would certainly help. People know that we brought Said here to create goals and to score goals that is the type of player he is so we are obviously hoping for him to do that. He has created some goals during the time that he has been here but he like everybody else is desperate for him to get that first goal and of course that would settle a lot of things down. As long as you keep on hitting the target and making the goalkeeper make saves then it will come at some point, hopefully, very soon it will come for him.”
FA Cup ambitions …
Alan Irvine said “We have used the squad today but we haven’t used a whole load of kids from the start of the game, we have used a squad of Premier League players who have a lot of experience so we certainly weren’t looking at this as the sort of game where we could put out a weakened team. We know what is coming over the next few weeks and we know the importance of being able to spread the demands amongst the whole squad, and fortunately, the players who came in today did extremely well. They strengthened their claims for starting places but they have also got to try and dislodge some people who have been playing really well for a number of games, it is a really healthy place for us to be in. I think we have a good squad of players as long as we can keep them all fit and healthy, but if we can keep them like that then why can’t we have a go at going as far as we can in this competition.”
The place would be cracking if fans were here right?
Alan Irvine said “I’d like to think so, obviously, it is going extremely well and it has been a long time since the club has had a run like this and it would be really nice for the fans to be here to hopefully enjoy that and to help us go on even further.”
On Ben Johnson’s improvement from pre-season struggles …
Alan Irvine said “Terrific for him, I think you are right, in fact, you are probably being very kind to him there by saying he struggled a little bit (pre-season against Bournemouth) I think he struggled a great deal in that game. One thing about Ben is he wants to improve he is a lad who will come in and analyse his performances, we sit with him on a one-to-one basis and talk through these things. Just yesterday I spoke to him about the importance of today’s game for him and he has shown just how strong he is mentally to be able to learn from that game against Bournemouth and continue to improve. I think with the attitude the lad has he will keep on improving.”
