Tomas Soucek may not have had a great season but a European Final in his homeland next month could hardly be a bigger incentive for him to find his best form.
And discussing tonight’s match he makes it clear that he is also – along with the rest of the boys – being spurred on by the events of last season against Eintracht Frankfurt.
He has also made it clear that the team will not be looking to defend a one goal lead and that the lads have been working in much on training to avoid such a scenario.
So the scene is set for Tomas and the boys to produce the sort of performance that will offer the manager his first trophy win of his career apart from the charity shield.
The defensive midfielder has been discussing the game on the official site and put his ambitions firmly on the line.
He said: “I remember last year that we were very disappointed after the semi-final defeat and even for a few days or a few months after that that we didn’t reach the final. It is even more motivation for all of us that we are one game from the final and we are 100 per cent on it.
We are very happy that we have onegoal in our hand. That’s good for us but we don’t want to come here and defend our result. We want to play our way and we have done a lot of things in the training session on how we want to play.
I remember nearly every set piece or piece we could do better, but we missed at that time, and I even saw we didn’t do well in the first leg.
So I was happy we did well in the first leg this time because that’s very important . Now we have the second leg and we have to show at least a similar performance as at home.
We are all motivated to get to the final because West Ham didn’t win a trophy for a few years and we want to give our fans a chance to get to a final and that’s our goal for all of us, so we are even more motivated than last year.”
