Michail Antonio has stated that our Hammers are buzzing ahead of a crucial period of the season where survival and European glory can be achieved.

West Ham’s second half thumping of Gent means the East London side have achieved back to back European semi finals. An Antonio brace, a Paqueta penalty and a world class goal from Rice meant the Hammers won 5-2 on aggregate.

West Ham didn’t make it easy for themselves though, going 1-0 down in the first half before the comeback was kick-started from an Antonio header. “We made hard work of it last week and again today,’ said Antonio when speaking to WHUFC.com, “but we always believed in ourselves and it was a good victory in the end.”

It ended up being an impressive win for his side, much like the fans “the boys are buzzing” Antonio explained. As they should be, West Ham absolutely dominated the second half and on another day it could’ve easily have been more than 4 goals. The striker put this down to confidence stating that “you could see the confidence started oozing from us in the second half.”

Many fans were wondering what Moyes had said at half time to spark the second half performance, Antonio revealed that “he said to go out there and just keep on playing how we’re playing. Going forward we were making mistakes, but we just had to settle down and make sure we found our players in the final third.” I think it’s fair to assume that Moyes was talking about the opening 10 minutes of the game but either way it evidently worked.

The Jamaican also spoke on the importance of building momentum to help the team go all the way. “our plan is to get to the final” he said, adding “we just want to build up momentum to get there, so we need to keep winning game.

“We believe” is a sentiment that’s starting to be shared by players and fans alike. There is a real sense that West Ham are finally starting to turn things around at the most crucial part of the season. We came so close last season, surely this season can’t be all miserable can it? The players have earned the crowd’s respect over the last two games, they’ve played how us fans know they can. I don’t think anyone is ready for these European nights to end so, in Antonio’s words, “hopefully this year we can win it.”

Written by Charlie Bass