Chelsea fullback Ben Chilwell was delighted with victory over West Ham.
With both sides locked on the same number of points at kick-off, the victory handed Thomas Tuchel's side a significant advantage in the race for Champions League qualification with just five matches remaining.
"When you look at the game and what it meant to both teams in the fight for top four, the win was massively important and thankfully we got it," Chilwell said.
"We knew before the game that physically they're very strong, on the wings and in midfield they want to run all day and they've got great quality going forward. We knew what kind of game it was going to be – we were going to have few chances and would have to defend to stop them having chances.
"The clean sheet is very big. We only got one goal and could probably have had a few more but we didn't play our best so the win was important."
Meanwhile, Chilwell welcomes the competition at left-back for club and country.
"I'm fighting with Marcos [Alonso] for that shirt at left wing-back and I'm fighting with Luke [Shaw] for the shirt with England so it's fun really," he added. "The competition to be starting is what you want and it pushes you to train harder.
"I've played a lot of football this season but I don't want to miss any of what we have coming up, including the Euros. It's a very important time in my career but as a team as well so we have to rest up as much as we can between games, recover well, train hard and take the opportunity when it comes."
