Brighton & Hove Albion midfielder Jose Izquierdo admitted he couldn’t hide his delight and emotion after he scored a stunning second in Albion’s 3-1 win over West Ham United at the Amex Stadium.
The Colombian midfielder picked up possession on the edge of the area before firing a curling effort into the top corner past Adrian and spoke glowingly about the feeling after putting the Seagulls back into the lead during a dramatic game on the south-coast.
He said, “I showed a lot of emotion in that moment because when I scored it was so important for the team.
“This will give us a lot of confidence now – I can’t describe my emotions in that moment and soon as I received the ball the only thing in my mind was to have a shot.
“In Colombia I watched West Ham plenty of times but there’s no coincidence that I’ve now scored against them twice this season – I’m just happy for myself, the team and the coach today.”
Chris Hughton’s men came into the weekend’s contest having drawn 1-1 with Southampton during midweek, and the midfielder admitted that the result three days prior had given the team extra motivation against the Londoners.
“After Wednesday night today was important – we felt we deserved to win the game against Southampton because we began brightly.
“We dropped too deep in the second half and gave them the ball too much at St Mary’s, but today we took the game to the opposition and looked for the third goal to get the points and finish the game off.”
The win was Albion’s first in the Premier League of 2018 and lifts the Seagulls to 13th position in the top flight, but the wide-man insisted every game is important and he stressed the need to perform at a consistently high level every week between now and the campaign’s end.
"I think every win is at the right time for us. It's very important at the moment.
"The league is very tight we have some tough games coming and we need to win our home games, every win is massive, so this one today is really big for us.
“Today we deserved it and we were very happy with the win."