Dean Ashton backs Dimitri Payet but slams his West Ham United team-mates

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The Hammers’ seventh placed finish last season appeared to herald a new era of positivity at the shiny new London Stadium.

Former West Ham United striker Dean Ashton has told talkSPORT that the vast majority of the club’s players have underperformed this season, though mistakes in the transfer market means they lack the required quality in reserve.

The Hammers have endured yet another post-game post-mortem after collapsing and conceding four times in the final 20 minutes against Arsenal on Saturday, with Alexis Sanchez scoring a sensational hat-trick.

However, the magisterial performance of the Chilean will not be any excuse for yet another dismal defeat for a side who performed excellently on their way to a seventh placed finish last season, especially after folding in a 4-1 defeat to Manchester United in the EFL Cup quarter-final in midweek.

And Ashton says the vast majority of West Ham’s players have failed to demonstrate either their quality or determination in recent weeks, although he took time out to praise talisman Dimitri Payet, who has come under fire from many of the club’s fans due to his perceived lack of hunger.

“There’s not one player in that West Ham squad, except maybe [Aaron] Creswell, maybe [Manuel] Lanzini and Payet to an extent, that have reached the levels of last season,” Ashton told Jim White on talkSPORT, broadcast at 10am on 5^th December.

“Payet, before the weekend, has created 11 more chances than anyone else in the Premier League. He’s doing a job. The others are not reaching the same levels, they can’t be.”

The Hammers’ plight has not been helped with a series of injuries to key players, including strikers Andy Carroll and Diafra Sakho, though summer arrivals Simone Zaza, Jonathan Calleri and Ashley Fletcher have failed miserably to step up to the plate, failing to score a league goal between them.

And Ashton insists that his former club cannot use injuries as an excuse for their subpar displays.

“West Ham are again struggling with injures and when your best players are injured you probably won’t compete. And they haven’t done well enough in the transfer market to have players come in to compete.”