Zinchenko delighted with dream start

Oleksandr Zinchenko believes that the confidence gained from our fast start against Bournemouth was the major factor in our comfortable 3-0 win at the Vitality Stadium.

Two goals from Martin Odegaard within the opening 11 minutes put us on course for a third straight win, with William Saliba adding a third just after half-time to maintain our 100% record this term.

And the Ukrainian defender is also happy that a clean sheet was kept despite enduring some difficult moments in the early stages of the second 45 after Scott Parker made a tactical switch in an attempt to change the momentum - another sign of the growing belief within our young squad.

Speaking post-match, he said: “It’s a great feeling to get three points and we don’t concede a goal. 

“It’s always important to score in the beginning of the game because this first goal can give you some confidence to control the game and that’s what we did. We did well, especially in the first half, the opponent didn’t create anything - they had zero shots on target.

“In the second half they started to play with three at the back and we were suffering at some points, but in the end we didn’t concede, that’s the most important thing. There are still a lot of things to improve, but I think we are on the right way.”

Zinchenko played his third game for us, as did Saliba who capped a fine performance with an even better goal, and the left-back was full of praise for his teammate, revealing that he has quickly become a popular member of the squad.

“He’s incredible.” Zinchenko evaluated. “It looks like this guy has got a lot of experience in his bag, but he’s still so young. Fingers crossed, we’ve got an unbelievable centre-back.

“He’s such a nice guy and he deserves this. A massive thanks to our fans as well, they did unbelievably well during all the games and they helped us a lot and of course, William deserves that song. If we’re going to get a clean sheet every single game, they’re going to sing every time!”

The win puts us on top of the Premier League table for the time being, a position Zinchenko is very much used to following his time at Manchester City. However, his relentless nature isn’t allowing him to get carried away just yet, as thoughts already begin to turn to the visit of Fulham next weekend.

“It’s just the beginning of the season,” he said. “There’s a lot of games ahead of us, there’s a lot of things to improve, but we just need to be focused on the next one, the next one, the next one. 

“We need to analyse what we have done well, what we should improve, what we should change and we know the manager is going to tell us. We need to show our best performance every single week.”