David Moyes has issued a stark message to his West Ham players and warned their recent drop in standards will not be tolerated as the club bids to break into the Champions League.
The Hammers were seconds away from a humiliating FA Cup defeat at sixth-tier Kidderminster Harriers on Saturday and Moyes has noticed the level of some players has dipped in the last three months.
Since beating Liverpool to go third on November 7, the Hammers have managed just four wins in 12 Premier League matches and have dropped outside the top four.
They host Watford tonight and Moyes says his squad are in need of a "rocket" to get their top-four push back on track after back-to-back League defeats before the winter break.
West Ham failed to make any new signings in January and Moyes has challenged some of his underperforming players to prove the club does not need to upgrade on them in the transfer market.
"I think we’re needing another rocket to go and get in shape a little bit," Moyes told Standard Sport.
"We need to get back to the high standards now, that is the demand I am putting on the players. We’ve got quite a few players who have shown really good levels and maybe not quite reached that probably since the November international break.
"We could do with getting to a consistent level and consistent standards of our form. It is not that I think our results have been bad, it’s just that some of the players have played really well and some have played really poorly by their standards."
The loan signing of Jesse Lingard last January gave West Ham a huge lift for the second half of last season, but after no new signings arrived last month Moyes has told the players they must find a spark themselves.
Moyes said: "[The rocket has to come] from within.
"This is the challenge to the players now to step up and go again.
"I’m quite looking forward to it to see if they can do it.
"We’ll learn a lot from them in the coming months, to see if they can maintain a challenge or do we really need to go into the transfer market and make some more signings? Maybe this group of players are going to show you that the right thing to do was not [sign anyone].
"But if they don’t then maybe that’s what we’ll have to do to make sure we keep the standards up.
"They’ve started the season, in the main, really well. A good return for the first half, we’re in challenging in a strong position and hoping we can keep it up."
With 15 games to play, West Ham are two points behind their tally at this stage last season, when they went on to win eight of their last 15 games to finish sixth.
They will probably need an even stronger finish this season in their battle with Manchester United, Arsenal and Tottenham to qualify for the Champions League.
While Declan Rice and Jarrod Bowen have been phenomenal in recent weeks, usually reliable performers such as Michail Antonio, Pablo Fornals and Tomas Soucek have blown hot and cold. Moyes needs more from them all if West Ham are to stay in the hunt.
