West Ham United may have improved under Manuel Pellegrini but a shocking attitude is holding them back.
West Ham started the Chilean’s tenure by losing their opening four Premier League matches.
That saw Pellegrini installed one of the early favourites for the sack.
The title-winning former Man City boss turned things around, though, to push the Hammers up the table.
West Ham sit 13th in the table with 12 points from their opening 12 games.
It is a distinctly average start.
Tough games out of the way but complacency against lesser clubs is the enemy
But it is mitigated by the fact West Ham have faced most of the league’s top clubs with exception of title favourites and Pellegrini’s former club City, who are next up after the international break.
In that time the experienced boss MUST make addressing West Ham’s shocking attitude problem his main priority.
The Hammers players are guilty of rank complacency in the fixtures so far.
It is no coincidence that West Ham have lost games against so-called lesser teams Bournemouth, Wolves and Brighton while also failing to beat Huddersfield.
In each of those games West Ham looked like they expected to simply turn up and roll over the opposition.
And the truth is Pellegrini’s squad simply is not good enough to allow for such a lackadaisical approach, especially given his Premier League-worst injury list.
The first half displays against Brighton and Huddersfield have typified the season so far.
Pellegrini must get West Ham working hard for 90 minutes
Ponderous, slow and lacklustre best sum the displays up.
The frustrating thing for supporters is that when the Hammers do finally wake up they look a force.
It is also no coincidence that the running stats for Pellegrini’s side make for grim reading.
The stats don’t lie
The Irons have covered 1,282.9km with only Cardiff covering less ground.
That’s nearly 93km less than leading side Arsenal – a full 57.5 miles.
Yes it is not all about distance covered but it is an indication of where Pellegrini’s problems lay.
They are similar statistics which saw Slaven Bilic struggle at the start of last season.
He was eventually sacked and replaced by David Moyes who made getting the Hammers to work harder and run further his key priority to turn things around.
Now Pellegrini must get West Ham working harder and for 90 minutes if he wants to achieve anything of note in East London.
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