Hughton praises 'perfect performance' on the road and salutes Duffy and Dunk

Chris Hughton praised a 'perfect' away performance and saluted the stand-out showing of defensive duo Lewis Dunk and Shane Duffy as Brighton & Hove Albion secured their first away win of the season at West Ham.
Chris HughtonChris Hughton
Chris Hughton

A Glenn Murray brace, the second coming from the penalty spot, along with Jose Izquerido's first goal for the Seagulls helped them past a woeful West Ham at the London Stadium.

It was Albion's maiden Premier League success on the road and their first in the top flight for 34 years. The three points pushed them up into the top half of the table, while the Hammers slip to 17th - one place above the bottom three..

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On whether it was the best possible performance away from home, Hughton said: "Yes I think it was and against a team that had won three out of four games here.

"The first goal is important. For a team like ourselves it is always going to be more difficult and challenging away from home. The first goal perhaps settles any nerves the team might have had and we went on then to have a real perfect performance.

"The challenges are always there away from home and what you want to do is lift confidence. Goals lift confidence and we were able to come out in the second half knowing that West Ham were going to have to open up.

"We thought we had reasonable periods of the game where we had good control of the game and we thought if we had that good control of the ball when we got it, we would have chances."

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And while Hughton pointed to a superb team performance, the praise for his two central defenders has not gone unnoticed and the boss was keen to get in on the act.

He said: "Before I got here, a lot were talking about the performances of the two centre-halves and I thought both were outstanding today, but they have to have a team in front of them and that's about leading from the front and having a defensive strategy coming away from home.

"Sometimes that doesn't work, you can concede a goal and it all changes and you have to open up to a different type of games, but you are relient on a team that sticks to their jobs. We had to deal with a lot of crosses and we dealt with them well which gave us a platform to push on."