Manuel Pellegrini admits handball goal helped West Ham but says it did not decide win over Fulham

West Ham's handball equaliser against Fulham was not decisive in their 3-1 Premier League home win on Friday night, according to Manuel Pellegrini.

Javier Hernandez turned in Robert Snodgrass' corner with his hand half an hour into the Hammers' victory on Friday night, before which Pellegrini's side had been poor against second-from-bottom Fulham.

They dominated most of the rest of the game at the London Stadium, but Pellegrini put their transformation down to their recent run of slow starts rather than Hernandez's goal.

He said: "I've seen it now, it's handball but nobody really saw very clearly. The Fulham players didn't complain much about it, maybe they didn't see if it was the head or hand, but I don't think it decided the game. We scored two more and created plenty more chances.

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"We started the game sleeping, the first 10 minutes were unbelievable, they created chances, scored the goal and had another shot wide, but after those 10 minutes we played very well.

"We scored three goals, had three or four clear chances and they didn't have any more clear-cut opportunities."

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Pellegrini's men have found the opening 15 minutes of matches troublesome all season, but even 27 games in the Chilean is still unsure what is causing their early woes.

He said: "You never know the reason why but maybe we are a little bit struggling with instruction at the moment. The important thing was that we changed the attitude."

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