West Ham United skipper Jarrod Bowen was named Man of the Match as West Ham were held to a 1-1 draw at the AmEx Stadium this afternoon.
Here's how he reacted to this afternoon's draw at Brighton.JB: It feels a bit like a loss. Maybe we sat back too far and invited the pressure. That's something that we have to look at ourselves. We've done it a few times where you want to protect the leads and we know winning in the Premier League away from home is so hard. Maybe we gave them a bit too much [room], a few ricochets in the box and they score. But, we got a point - though like I said, it feels like one lost more than anything I'd say.
Q: How fine is this balance that you need to find? We're used to seeing Nuno's teams sitting deep and being very, very efficient defensively. But how do you find this?
JB: We limited them most of the game. I can't remember 'Phonse having lots and lots to do in in goal. The way the manager wants us to play, we've all bought into. I think you can see that. At the start the season, the goals we've conceded to now, we haven't conceded as many. That's where what you've got to stop to win games in the Premier League and we've done that.
But like I said, we've got ourselves in a really good position being one-nil up away from home, a couple more chances to go two-nil up and then before you know it, they equalise. They've scored a lot of late goals against us in the in the past and they're a side with real, real quality. They punished us right at the end, which for us was heartbreaking because I thought we'd done so much to get into the lead. We just didn't see it out.
Q: And to be fair, you guys created enough chances to win the game as well. Talk us through your goal - because it looked almost like a tackle, you're tackling the ball?
JB: Yeah, I mean, when you haven't scored for a while, they're the hardest ones. I had one just before and the keeper made a worldy save. When Callum [Wilson] got the ball, I just wanted to make a run for him, you know, not knowing if I was going to get the ball. I knew I had to slice it and go in the far corner. I knew the defender was going to try and block the shot. So it was almost like a slide tackle to finish. I knew what I was doing but to see it go in, yeah, it was a relief to score.
Q: For you guys up front, how important is it to have this cutting edge when you have those few chances that you do?
JB: We have to take the chances. The 'keeper made a double save today which on another day goes in and that's another goal for us. So sometimes you have to give credit to a goalkeeper as well. They're there to keep the ball out of the back of the net, we're there to put the ball in the back of the net. We have to be clinical with our opportunities, especially in the position that we're in.
We've got one today, we could have had more. So I think it's a good thing is when you create these chances, you get that confidence. It's another thing if you know you're not creating chances or you're not having opportunities in games, then you can feel really low. But I feel like we're having good opportunities in games. So it's down to us attackers to put the ball in the back of the net.
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