England international striker Emile Heskey coolly opened the scoring for the home side after collecting a fine pass from the lively David Dunn. A brilliant individual goal from Bobby Zamora shocked the home side and then an acute finish from Marlon Harewood gave the Hammers a 2-1 lead at the break.
Pardew said, “Bobby can do those sort of things. He has waited patiently for his chance - I fancied him tonight and he came up good for us. He put in a great performance.
”I thought he (Harewood) was terrific and never stopped working - if you get strikers working that hard for you it sends the right message. He suffers from migraines and had one before the match - it was important for us that he played.
”It was not the purest of games tonight but sometimes you have to dig in. We had to see it out and from our point of view our determination, character, spirit and speed was a problem for them tonight.”