West Ham United star Michail Antonio has been discussing the club’s terrible start to the season.
West Ham United manager Slaven Bilic watches on
A terrible start to the season, infighting amongst fans, resentment towards owners and concerns over safety have soured the Hammers’ season so far.
Slaven Bilic‘s side have lost four of their opening five Premier League matches and scraped past Bournemouth in their solitary victory.
The Hammers were also embarrassingly dumped out of the Europa League by Romanian minnows Astra Giurgiu for the second season running.
Back-to-back 4-2 defeats to Watford and West Bromwich Albion have left the Hammers in the relegation zone five games in.
West Ham United’s Michail Antonio looks dejected
Antonio was amongst the goals again in defeat at the Hawthorns last time out and has scored six of West Ham’s eight goals this season to establish himself as the Premier League’s top scorer.
Pundits, fans and Bilic have been left scratching their heads to pinpoint what is going wrong this season with Antonio the latest to add his two pennyworth.
Bilic signed 13 players over the summer and many point to the fact the squad is unsettled and hasn’t gelled yet as one of the main reasons for their struggles.
But in an interview with the club’s official site, Antonio insisted new players are not to blame … even if he clearly forgot about his new teammates Havard Nordtveit and Simeone Zaza in his assessment.
West Ham United’s Simone Zaza looks dejected
“We don’t have the resilience we had last year and we need to get that back,” Antonio told whufc.com.
“We haven’t changed players, nothing’s changed – the only new player there is Arthur and he’s a quality left back.
“I don’t see what the difference is. It has to be mentality more than anything, because we haven’t changed players. We have to forget everything that’s happened and start again.”
Of course Nordtveit, who has been woeful in most of his game time thus far, and Italian international Zaza – who was hauled off at half-time at West Brom – are not the only ones to blame for West Ham’s struggles in the Midlands at the weekend.
West Bromwich Albion’s Nacer Chadli destroyed Havard Nordtveit
But it says everything that neither player – nor indeed another summer signing Sofiane Feghouli who played in the second half – made enough of an impression on Antonio for him to remember they were new players in his post match comments.
One thing he has got spot on, though, is that West Ham sorely lacking the resilience they showed so often during their farewell Boleyn season.
The club never knew when it was beaten last season, a sharp contrast to this where heads drop at the first sign of adversity.
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