Rices discusses the Hammers “little blip”

Declan Rice is about and talking a good game ahead of Burnley!

The official site has decided to publish another of those upbeat messages from a player ahead of what – and how many times have we said this before -is a serious must win match.

As is usually the case in such cases as this there is no looking over the shoulder – only a positive ‘we’re on our way back’ message from the player concerned.

Let’s hope and believe that his confidence is reflected through a team which Alebian Ajeti claimed was indeed in need of confidence – notably at  this weekend.

So the messages become a little mixed but in these grey November days when it seems the world is against us the bright side hopefully is not far away.

Turf Moor would be a good place to start the rebuilding of morale which, whatever the players say, looks on the floor right now.

However, Declan declared: “”100 per cent [we can aim for the top six]. I think if you look from fifth to about 13th, there’s about four points between six or seven teams.

“So you just have to keep working hard. If we beat Burnley on the weekend you’re back up to seventh or eighth, so it’s not that far away.

“[The recent run] has been very frustrating. I think every player is feeling the same, the manager is feeling the same.

“Our confidence was so high at the start of the season. We’re going through a little blip now, it happens to every team. It’s about how we get out of it.

“We need to be more confident on the pitch, we need to be more defensively structured and we need to take our chances because in games we’ve had chances to kill the game off.”