DUBAI // Sam Allardyce hopes his West Ham United side can return from a few days of warm-weather training in booming Dubai refreshed and ready to make their own progressive move.
Allardyce oversaw West Ham’s best start to a top-flight campaign in almost 30 years when they beat Leicester City 2-0 to sit fourth on Christmas Day.
Since then results have not matched performances.
Draws at Southampton and Tottenham Hotspur and a 1-0 defeat last week to Chelsea have played their part in West Ham collecting just one league win in 11 to slip to 10th.
West Ham, taking advantage of a rare free weekend courtesy of their fourth-round exit from the FA Cup, have been this week training at Dubai Sports City.
Allardyce is confident his squad will be rejuvenated when domestic action resumes on Saturday with a trip to the Emirates Stadium to face an Arsenal side that have seven league wins from a possible nine this year.
After that they host Sunderland and travel to Leicester City.
“If we play to our best, as we did against Chelsea and Tottenham, the next three games are all winnable,” Allardyce said.
“Unfortunately, against Chelsea we didn’t get what we wanted because we didn’t finish our chances and they scored an offside goal. But against Tottenham, we were only five seconds away from three points.
“So we can win and winning is the most important thing for us now. Performances have not been the problem, but you have to turn performances into victories.”
Allardyce has long been the subject of criticism from West Ham supporters, a fact the 60-year-old manager puts down to overachievement in his first year at the club when they finished 10th.
The London club at present is three points off eighth on 39 points with 10 games to play.
“We overachieved by four or five places [in our first year],” he said. “But when you overachieve you try to take advantage again and that equates to too much expectations, especially coming from your own fans.
"If we finish sixth in the league, that is like winning the Premier League. There is no doubt about that. To finish in sixth spot compared to the spending power of the rest of the teams in and around that area, that would be beyond a major achievement."
Allardyce, whose contract expires in the summer, has seen his future at Upton Park brought into question in recent days, with a switch to Sunderland mooted yesterday.
He is thinking, though, only about finishing strongly with West Ham.
“Eighth for us is achievable; we should already be there,” he said. “We should have already secured a lot more points, but we haven’t and that shows you the frailties of the squad.
“Even though our performances have been excellent, our victories have turned into draws and because of that we have slipped down the league a little bit.
“So I know the frailties, I’ve seen them and know what we need to do so those frailties don’t appear next season.
“For now though it’s about these last 10 games, securing as many points as possible and trying to hit the target of eighth in the league.”
gmeenAghan@thenational.ae
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