West Ham boss David Moyes was delighted with their performance for victory over Manchester United.
David de Gea's failure to make a routine save from Said Benrahma's matchwinning drive produced the only goal of the game.
Moyes said, "We needed a top performance and tonight I felt we were getting much closer to it.
"We were better with the ball, harder working, more compact when we needed to be because we played a really good team tonight and we'll play another one on Thursday in AZ, as you don't play bad teams in European semi-finals either. Everyone's got to be ready to help us get to a final.
"You have to get the shots on target.
"If he (Sad Benrahma) gets them on target we might score. We needed that bit of fortune and let's be fair, we've not had much fortune with refereeing decisions recently, and I have to say we're probably due a couple of penalty kicks in the coming games with the way things have been going.
"We played with a bit of pomp tonight.
"Of course there were periods when we couldn't have the ball because they were so good with it, but we had bits but Michail Antonio was a threat.
"When he got hold of it we looked as though we were ready to break. Declan was excellent in midfield, getting up onto the second balls and getting the game started for us.
"Lucas Paquet at the moment is giving us lots of bits of magic to get us out of trouble. There were a couple of chances where I thought he could have played better passes through, but lots of good things today."