Hammers pass Euro test but real work's still ahead for Moyes

THE NARRATIVE of this fixture always seemed likely to write itself, and so it proved: West Ham, having left the snow and their relegation woe in London, would lift spirits with some UV, vitamin D and another win on tour in Europe.

- Malik Ouzia

Despite a tepid start, perhaps a hangover from last weekend’s chastening experience at Brighton, and some late pressure from their unheralded Cypriot opposition, West Ham were ultimately comfortable winners here.

Michail Antonio’s first-half double — a fine glancing header and an uncharacteristic pearler — earned a 2-0 win that means only a result cataclysmic even by this season’s standards in next week’s return will deprive David Moyes’s side of a second successive European quarter-final.

There were further chances to kill the tie off — Antonio denied a perfect hattrick by the post and substitute Lucas Paqueta thwarted one-on-one late on — but a clean sheet and a healthy lead marked a decent return for a team to whom little has come easy of late.