West Ham can afford no hangovers from the disappointment of being caught at the death by Manchester United on Sunday.
Third-placed Southampton await and if the Irons are to avoid the south coast side scoring a ‘double’ over them they awill need to be at their very best.
Manager Sam Allardyce puts it simply declaring the team will have to give all it has to overcome Ronald Koeman’s side.
He told www.whufc.com: “It’s difficult to maintain this level and recover because we’ve played Man United on Sunday and Southampton played QPR on Saturday.
But they’ve got to take a lot of confidence from how they played and try and lift themselves, starting on Monday morning, to be ready for Southampton..
“We know how difficult that game will be. People were surprised they beat us here at the start of the season, but they’ve now seen what a quality team they are throughout the season.
“We’ve been outstanding as well, but not been quite as consistent as them with the victories that we’ve gained. They’ve had one or two more victories, but hopefully we can lift ourselves to the same level of performance on Wednesday.
“With where Southampton are, we will need to be at our best to get anything out of the game.”
A great performance against ManYoo, but I thought that we defended too deep at the death. I don’t know if that was fear, tiredness or tactics (probably a mixture) but I thought Sam could have introduced Amalfitano to help push the midfield forward 5 or 10 yards. We allowed a lot of the long balls by sitting off them in midfield. Nonetheless, a great performance.
Sam’s comments about Carroll’s fitness seem to suggest that he would be straight back if available. Having seen Sakho and Valencia again I think they deserve the starting berths up front irrespective of Carroll’s availability. It should be their positions to lose.
Although Southampton have been excellent this year I thought the home performance against them was probably our worst this term. Let’s put the record straight!