Alan Irvine delighted with ‘professional’ West Ham performance in win v Doncaster
West Ham assistant boss Alan Irvine was delighted with his side’s performance as they ran out 4-0 winners in the fourth round FA Cup tie with Doncaster.
Goals from Pablo Fornals, Andriy Yarmolenko, debutant Oladapo Afolayan and an own goal were more than enough to see the Hammers through to the fifth round to face the winner of Liverpool v Manchester United.
Speaking to whufc.com, Irvine said he was happy with the changes made to the XI.
“It was a professional performance right from the start,” Irvine said. “Obviously a great start for us, but right through to the end we were still trying to do the right things. It was a really pleasing performance.
“We did make some changes, and clearly we did that because of the number of games coming up, but it was a team of Premier League players we had out there.
“And it needed to be because we know that Doncaster have been playing extremely well and had won seven out of their last eight games.
“I watched three of their games getting ready for this one and they were excellent in all three games, including at Blackburn Rovers in the previous round.”
Chances taken by fringe players
David Moyes, Irvine and the coaching staff got it spot on again yesterday afternoon.
There were wholesale changes to the starting XI that faced Burnley and West Brom within the last week. Most notably, Issa Diop was welcomed back into the side.
Diop has gone from an everpresent in recent seasons to just three Premier League starts this campaign. His last appearance coming over a month ago at home to Palace.
Craig Dawson’s emergence pushed Issa further down the pecking order, so it was good to see him get 90 minutes. He’s considerably younger than the rest of our centre backs and still has a very bright future at West Ham.
The likes of Ryan Fredericks, Mark Noble, Fabian Balbuena, Ben Johnson and Andriy Yarmolenko haven’t started in the Premier League for weeks.
Yarmolenko, in particular, had a good afternoon, scoring with a delicate finish to put us 2-0 up.
Club captain Noble and Fredericks also contributed to the goals. The latter assisted in the first half and saw his late effort followed up by debutant Afolayan.
It was good to see them all working hard for their time involved, indicating they’re hungry for more minutes.
Competition for places such as this that will continue to push us higher in the Premier League table. We now look forward to a trip to Selhurst Park to play Crystal Palace on Tuesday.
In other West Ham news, Hammers and Wolves in for PL winning striker.