West Ham head to Fulham looking for a fourth straight victory with Manuel Pellegrini insisting their ‘big-team’ mentality is finally paying off.
Alarm bells were ringing at the London Stadium when Pellegrini’s new-look, expensively-assembled side lost their opening four matches of the season.
But Pellegrini stuck to his attacking philosophy and an impressive turnaround has seen the Hammers win three on the spin to climb well away from trouble and start to target a top-10, or even top six, finish.
“Of course with that bad start, it was very difficult to recover so many points,” said Pellegrini.
“Now maybe if you started the Premier League after the first four games, maybe in this moment we are sixth fighting for a European spot. But that is impossible to do.
“You must understand you must continue to recover from that bad start and at this moment we must continue to improve our position in the table.
“I’m pleased with the change in mentality because as a manager it’s hard to talk too much when you play four games and have lost them.
“So now we are improving and having good results, but I repeat, football is for moments and we are in a good moment and the difficulty is to continue that moment.
“Are we playing like a big team? We are on the way to doing it in that we have a lot of improvements in personality, especially when we go to play away.
“We always go for the game from the first minute to the last minute and try to attack and try to score before the home team.
“So there are a lot of things that I can say we are playing as a big team, but there are a lot of things we must improve. We must continue improving and I hope we will do it.”
West Ham will be looking to make it four top-flight victories in succession for the first time in almost five years.
But injury-jinxed midfielder Jack Wilshere will miss the trip to Craven Cottage with an ankle problem and striker Lucas Perez has a foot injury.
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