Slaven Bilic played down West Ham’s chances of finishing in the Premier League’s top four after they beat Tottenham 1-0.
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“Spurs should be more happy with the result than us – it should have been more”.
Alli kicked the ground during the warm-up before Tottenham’s win over Swansea on Sunday and while he played the whole 90 minutes of the match, he was later seen limping heavily when he left the stadium.
“We should have won the game”.
” I think there is Arsenal, Tottenham and Manchester City who fight for the title and there is little Leicester who fight against them”.
“We have a lot of matches still to go. Our objective at the end of last season was clear, to reduce the gap with the teams at the top”.
“We had more freedom in the second half but if you don’t score it’s hard to get the points”.
“Tottenham are strong in every situation”, said the Italian.
His tactics have been spot on from the very beginning and he appears to prepare his team for games better than any other manager in the Premier League now does. “In the changing room the players were disappointed but the way they fought in the second half was fantastic”.
“In all aspects of the football, for 90 minutes, we were simply magnificent”.
Romelu Lukaku scored from a Funes Mori cross on the hour to make it 3-0 and, although Rudy Gestede reduced the arrears on 79 minutes, it did little to boost morale around Villa Park, with the club now eight points away from safety.
West Brom’s defence were forced into early action, intercepting Shinji Okazaki’s unsafe cross and blocking a hopeful strike from Danny Drinkwater. “In the first half we were poor and in the second half we tried to play the way we normally do but it was hard”.
Fifth-placed Manchester United, on a run of three successive wins, host Watford with 18-year-old striker Marcus Rashford fresh from scoring four goals in two games and champions Chelsea bid to continue their revival at Norwich.
Payet had a curling effort deflected wide late in the half and Spurs will have been relieved to head into the interval only a goal down given the pressure they were forced to soak up.
From then on, Spurs failed to get the ball under control for any length of time and played into West Ham’s hands by lofting long balls forward that were hit without much hope.
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The visitors took a surprise lead after just 12 minutes when Salomon Rondon shrugged off the challenge of Robert Huth to latch on to Darren Fletcher’s through-ball before sliding his finish underneath the onrushing Kasper Schmeichel.
