Goddard's Disappointment

Paul Goddard says that West Ham are now "looking over our shoulders again" after the defeat at Aston Villa at the weekend.

He says the defeat could and sould have been avoided, insisting: "To lose in that manner is the hardest pill to swallow but what makes it even harder is that we feel we have been totally unprofessional in the last few minutes of the game.

"We had a number of chances to kill the game off, in three or four different situations, and we didn't.

"It is criminal what happened and that's what makes it more disappointing; we are still trying to do silly things in advanced areas when we just needed to kill the game off.

"You have to consider that, if you are at 1-1 away from home in the last few minutes of the game, you can take a point, and if we'd have come away with that it would have been hard earned and fantastic.

"But we have really slaughtered ourselves and it is very disappointing because there was nothing wrong with the performance, though we had to change the system a couple of times."

Paul admits that they are looking at still picking up points to achieve the first objective of avoiding relegation, and adds: "Everybody in the league is looking at it, it is extremely tight at both ends, and the sooner you get the points, the better.

"We felt if we could have got a result on Saturday, we'd have been stretching into the top half, but now we are looking over our shoulders again.

"A lot of things have been said and we have got to learn quickly, because this has happened to us two or three times before."