West Ham United winger Luis Boa Morte has welcomed the arrival of new manager Gianfranco Zola.

Boa Morte said: "We are excited and looking to carry on the work we have done with Kevin with the new gaffer. He [Zola] is a young manager who I feel will bring a fresh and different mentality to our club.

"We are all looking forward to working with him because he did not stop playing that long ago and so that knowledge will be very good. For myself, I look forward to working with Gianfranco and improving my game with him. I believe very strongly he can be a very good manager for us."

On working with caretaker coach Kevin Keen, Boa Morte also told whufc.com: "We all enjoyed working with Kevin, it was very good for all of us and we felt that although we lost, we took much of what we had done into the game and it was very positive.

"We passed the ball around well and created lots of chances, what we must do now is step up and make sure we put those other chances away this weekend. All the boys want to thank Kevin because we were really pleased with what he did for us and I think he was pleased too, with our work-rate and effort on the pitch."