West Ham boss feared a repeat of QPR game

Swansea City manager Michael Laudrup (right) is greeted by West Ham United manager Sam Allardyce before the Barclays Premier League match at Upton Park, London.

Dave Evans, West Ham Correspondent Monday, February 4, 2013
1:00 PM

Hammers manager Sam Allardyce was wondering when the winning goal was going to come at Upton Park on Saturday

West Ham boss Sam Allardyce looked a relieved man after the narrow 1-0 victory over Swansea City at Upton Park. Not only had they ended a terrible run in the Premier League, but star man Andy Carroll had come through 90 minutes unscathed.

“We were under big pressure today to produce a result,” admitted the boss after Carroll’s superb header had given then all three points.

“The last eight games have not brought the points we have been looking for, but we have hit the 30-point total now which is a great relief after going for eight games with only five points.”

At times it didn’t look like coming. Swansea had a lot of possession without ever looking dangerous, while the Hammers carved out chance after chance, only to be denied by a superb display by keeper Gerhard Tremmel.

“My mind went back to the QPR game” said Allardyce. “My God, if you think we created chances against Swansea, you should have seen that one, so my mind was drifting back to that.

“But I thought, keep a clean sheet and I’m sure we’ll get a goal. We got our tactics right, the lads came up with a really good stat that Swansea have conceded 67 per cent of their goals through set-pieces this season and strangely enough, we won the game on a set play.

“Their keeper had a stormer today as well in terms of the saves he has made and he is only their number two, but it is nice to see us making chances and hitting the target and if we keep doing that we will score a lot more goals.”

Allardyce was also pleasantly surprised to see the return of Carroll and was delighted with his performance.

“It was his first full 90 minutes in nine weeks and his only other participation in a game other than that was the few minutes he got at Fulham,” said the manager.

“But when you looked at him running around today, there didn’t look like any fatigue there, so we left him on as he was enjoying himself that much.”