West Ham United boss Gianfranco Zola says his team will maintain an English core - and hopes to build that with young players coming through the Hammers system.

After victory over Sunderland, where local lads James Tomkins and Junior Stanislas were both on target, Zola told whufc.com: "I like to look for young players. We can bring some good ones from abroad but the idea was also to develop the players we have here. So far it is working well and we have to work even harder on this.

"It is fantastic when you see young players coming from the youth team into the first team and they do well, do their jobs and score also. It's great, not just for me and the club but for the atmosphere, for the supporters and that's what we want to do. We need to 'feed it' and that's the job we need to do for the next few years.

"The tradition at this club is to produce very good players and that's the reason why I believe the club appointed me as they know I like working this way and so they want to carry on doing this. The club has done very well. I'm looking forward to improving in every situation possible."