Tuesday 12 January 2016 23:38, UK
West Ham United manager Slaven Bilic claimed his side "totally deserved" to beat Bournemouth 3-1 at the Vitality Stadium on Tuesday night.
The visitors came from behind to make it a record-equalling eight Premier League games without defeat this season thanks to a second-half brace from Enner Valencia, with the returning Dimitri Payet also getting on the scoresheet.
The victory moved West Ham up to fifth in the table, just a point behind Tottenham, with Bilic delighted with his team's second-half response on the south coast.
"I'm very pleased, of course," he said after the game. "The boys have done really well, we showed the character and quality and I think that we totally deserved to win the game."
The only negative as far as West Ham were concerned was an early injury to in-form striker Andy Carroll, who limped off after just 15 minutes with a muscular problem in his leg.
"We started the game good to be fair, we were on our front foot and dominating and then Andy got injured and to be fair they scored the first goal, not out of nothing, but it was not like they were dominating," Bilic added.
"After that, of course, it lifted their confidence and they started to play better and we were losing the ball very quickly. But even in the first half, at the beginning and in the last eight minutes, every time we were passing the ball, we were harming them.
"So at half-time, of course we were not happy with the result, but we said we had to match them in the basic things, second balls and all that, closing down and then start to play football and be more confident when we are going forward.
"We changed a bit of shape and in the second half I thought we were really, really good, we played like a team that wanted to win and then we scored three great goals, and it was a really good night for us."
