WEST HAM AIM HIGHER

West Ham are scraping the bottom spots of the Premier League and while they have not been going through the best of seasons, Stewart Downing is confident and optimistic about the head coach Sam Allardyce as he can still the club from relegation, according to the English midfielder.

“The easiest thing is to blame the manager because he’s at the top. I think he does very well at that, he takes a lot of the pressure off the players but he’s one of the reasons why I came here. If you look at it as a whole we’ve been very unlucky. It’s up to us. The manager picks the team but it’s up to us to get the results.

“We love playing for him. The owners know, they see sense and see a good manager. It’s easy to sulk and point and blame, but you’ve got to go out and get results’’. Downing said.

Sam Allardyce is undergoing increasing pressure as the results can’t seem to push the club out of the relegation zone and the number of players that have been getting injured has taken a significant impact upon the squad and the limited number of options that Allardyce has at his disposal.

Stewart Downing made his move to West Ham United on August 13 with a transfer fee believed to be around €6 million as he transferred from Liverpool to Boleyn Ground and despite making over 60 appearances for Liverpool, Downing has no regrets about joining the relegation threatened club as he went on talking about their current situation.

“It’s been difficult; getting 11 out at times has been difficult for the manager. In that sense it was always going to be tough for us. West Ham finished in 10th position last season, so it was a chance to build on that and the next thing you look at is can you get in Europe, can you nick one of those spots? With the players we have and with the signings that Sam made we had a good chance of that at the start of the season’’. Downing stated.