Jean-Philippe Mateta was the man to get the goals at either end of the second-half, finishing a rapid counter-attack after 48 minutes before sealing the result from the penalty spot in the closing moments – making it four goals in four matches in 2025.
“Of course it's always most important for a striker to score,” Glasner said. “It's his most important job to do for the team.
“In the first-half I think we controlled the game but we didn't create many chances – also West Ham defended their box pretty well – but in the second-half we were talking about overloading and finding good positions, and there's a build-up from the back and it starts and when Ebs [Eze] gets the ball, he's completely free because he's moving into the free space, and then he can make pressure on the defence, and then JP is always running.
“It was a little bit similar at Leicester – it was Ismaïla Sarr getting the ball in this area, making pressure and finding the right moment for the pass, and this is what we're always training and talking to them about, and then when JP gets the ball and having a free finish somewhere around the box, it's very often a goal.
“It was an important goal, but he also worked hard like all the others today in our defensive shape, and it's the third win in a row, the third clean sheet in a row, so I'm really delighted.”
On that clean sheet, he added: “I think it started weeks ago, and I always talked about Marc [Guéhi], Maxence [Lacroix] and Trevoh [Chalobah] and Chris [Richards]. They never played together until mid-October, because when Trevoh arrived he was injured immediately, then Chris was injured, so you need time to train.
“Everybody knows how we want to defend in the back three, but it starts in the beginning. We had five to 10 minutes in the second half where West Ham were too dominant, because we got a little bit tired and we didn't close the spaces with our attacking players, we gave them passes we don't want them to give, and then we had to react.
“The subs had a very good impact today, and not just Eddie [Nketiah] who got the penalty for us, also in the defensive structure. We were more compact again, and this is always teamwork. Sometimes we need Dean Henderson with a big save, but today I think he didn't need to have a big save to keep the clean sheet, so that's always the best for me as a manager.”
