'Hope' and a 'real shot' at survival

[BBC]

West Ham's recent performances are giving me hope that we can stay in the Premier League, and here's why.

When you look back to the beginning of the season, or even the beginning of the year, nothing was going our way. We weren't working together as a team, we weren't performing well enough to get points, and there were absolutely none of those smash-and-grab type games where you don't deserve the win, but you still come away with it.

However, our 4-0 win against Wolves has given me hope, despite the fact that it wasn't the best performance by a long way. If I'm completely honest, that scoreline was not reflective of our performance as a whole, and we definitely didn't deserve to go into the break ahead. We could barely get hold of the ball in the first half, and yet we went on to score a total of four goals and keep a clean sheet.

But why has that filled me with confidence? Because even when we aren't playing our best, we are making moments of magic that matter. We're showing that we're able to go against the run of play to score a goal, and we're keeping our heads up even in the most difficult patches of games. And this mentality is something that I believe will keep West Ham up.

We know a lot relies on how many points we can pick up and how those around us do, but as it stands we're out of the relegation zone and if we continue to take matters into our own hands there will be nothing stopping us avoiding relegation, despite the fact that it all looked completely lost back in January.

Are we going to outperform the opponent in all six of our last league games? It's not very likely, but if we can come away with points, even when we haven't been the better side, I think we're in with a real shot of staying up.

Find more from Holly Turbutt at West Ham Network