Pablo Zabaleta believes the Hammers’ four points from their two tough London derbies against Chelsea and Arsenal is a sign of better things to come from the east Londoners.
Having ended a two-month wait for league victory by seeing off the Blues on Saturday, David Moyes’ men backed that up with a hard-earned goalless draw against Arsenal on Wednesday.
A win and a draw with two clean sheets represented a highly satisfying return for Zabaleta, who says the team now needs to build from that base with a visit to Stoke just two days away.
He explained: “It is a good point, sometimes when you can’t win it’s important not to lose. We kept a clean sheet and everything is so tight at the bottom of the table, so now we need to move forward.
“We knew we needed to improve. We were conceding so many goals and we needed to improve our discipline, because we knew we had players up front who can score goals.
“In the last three games, we have done that. Probably at times we have been too deep and we need to be braver at keeping the ball, but when you play against teams with a lot of quality, you need to make sure you don’t give them too much space.
“We have a very tough game against Stoke on Saturday, away from home against a team who have struggled recently. Hopefully we can put in another good performance and it would be great if we can get three points.”