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Extra: Koscielny and Vermaelen reaction

Thomas Vermaelen

Catch up with some extra reaction from our victory over West Ham United. Click here for all our match coverage.

Laurent Koscielny…
In the first half we didn't play very well but we came back well and in the second half we played with ambition and tried to score the second goal. It was massively important to win because we want to play Champions League football next season.

Lukas Podolski is a very good player like we saw today and I hope he can score a lot of goals in the four games left that we play. It's important for us.

It's very hard to play against Andy Carroll. He's a player who does well with his head and is strong so it was difficult, but we just played the second ball and tried to stay strong at the back.

Now we will just focus on our four games and see where we finish at the end of the season. We know Everton play against big teams. We know that Everton are playing well but we will see.

Thomas Vermaelen…
It was a very important win. All the games we have coming up now are massive. We're very happy we could get the three points today.

"We were a bit static [in the first half] and didn't give enough options to play but in the second half we raised the tempo a bit and you could see we created some chances and some goals"

I think the players looked alright today, we recovered well over the last couple of days and we knew we had a short recovery time but we worked hard for these three points.

It's always good to come back just before half-time. To go into the break 1-0 down is not good so it's good that Podolski scored that goal. Overall I think we played better in the second half than we did in the first half. We were a bit static and didn't give enough options to play but in the second half we raised the tempo a bit and you could see we created some chances and some goals. I'm very happy with the second half.

We know [Podolski] has a great left foot and his goals were unbelievable. Olivier is very strong and he protected the ball very well for his goal and it was a good finish. It was not easy because it was a high ball and it was a perfect touch. He scored a good goal.

Every game has to be won now, this was one of them and I'm happy we did the job. Sunday is another one we need to win as well.

We had some experience with Kim Kallstrom, who is very experienced. Sometimes it's good to have all the players in the team who know how to win games and I think they showed that today.

It's understandable that there is some criticism because everybody looks at the results which weren't great for us, but we know there is still a lot to play for. We're still in the FA Cup and there are still important games coming up to reach the Champions League..

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