David Moyes heaps praise on West Ham new boy Joao Mario after Southampton heroics

West Ham’s transfer policy comes in for enough criticism – remember Simone Zaza, Sofiane Feghouli and Jonathan Calleri – but their push for safety this season is being led by some of their more astute attacking recruits.

Some eyebrows were raised when West Ham spent £20million on Marko Arnautovic in the summer but he has proven to be exactly what they needed: a charismatic number 9, who can lead the line by himself, making and taking chances out of nowhere.

On Saturday afternoon he scored his eighth and ninth goals of the season – all of them in the last four months – ensuring three points that West Ham could not do without. David Moyes said afterwards that the win was about the team – “not the Marko Arnautovic show” – but it is difficult to see the same result had Jordan Hugill been up front instead.

Playing off Arnautovic was Joao Mario, the Portuguese midfielder West Ham took from Inter Milan on loan in January, having failed to make much of an impression during 18 months in Italy. West Ham have signed more than enough big-name low-impact foreign players in the last few years and January signings are even harder than summer ones. And yet Mario is clearly a very good player and on Saturday he helped to make the difference, blasting in West Ham’s first and providing the clever cross for the second. He was part of Portugal’s victorious Euro 2016 team, after all, and for the first time on Saturday he looked it. Moyes, reflecting after the match, was proud of another astute signing.

“Tell me who’s made an impact as a January signing for any Premier League club? It’s not that easy to think of players who have made an impact from January,” Moyes said. “I think Joao Mario had probably his best game for us: he got us a really good goal, he got us the assist for the second one, so that pleased me. You’ve got to praise him for what he’s done.”

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This West Ham squad is not stacked with talent, and Moyes’ first job here was to introduce discipline and organisation that had eroded under Slaven Bilic. That puts more pressure on the creative and attacking players, especially with Manuel Lanzini and Javier Hernandez missing and Michail Antonio limping off after eight minutes. Arnautovic and Mario – the men Moyes calls his “mavericks” - had to deliver on Saturday, but they did.

“Mario brings a little bit of flair, he’s good on the ball, and a bit of natural talent,” Moyes said. “What goes un-noticed is that he’s actually a really hard-working boy as well. What we’ve needed from him – we’ve not had Manuel Lanzini, that was the reason we brought him, when [Lanzini] was injured in January – was to give us a goal, or an assist, and today he came up with the goods.”

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The success of the flair players justifies Moyes’ whole approach, a rigid 4-4-1-1 system reminiscent of his time at Everton. With Arthur Masuaku and Edimilson Fernandes providing extra defensive cover on both sides, and Declan Rice and Angelo Ogbonna solid at centre-back, this was a more solid defensive performance than we have seen for some time. Joe Hart barely had a save to make.

Moyes could not hide his enthusiasm when asked about West Ham’s second Premier League clean sheet of 2018. “The biggest thing,” he smiled “The biggest thing, before the game today, was to make sure we’re not conceding any goals, we’re hard to beat, back to the way we were. And what we’ve got is a few mavericks who are liable to come up with a goal. That was a good thing.”