The defeat at Coventry City, he feels, threw into sharp relief the need to bring new faces in and he says:
"Certainly I'm not happy with the team at the moment, and hopefully during this free period I'm going to get one or two in - maybe that competition will spark a few players to perform a bit better than they have at Coventry."
"There weren't many plus points from the weekend; we knew we were short of staff for the two games and ultimately that's shown up on the night - we need to have a stronger team out there and hopefully we can add some bodies in the next two weeks.
"I definitely feel that we'll have two new bodies before we go to Sheffield United.
"The team needs them at the minute because although a lot of the contenders are finding it difficult already, we can't afford to lose too many more games - and two out of six games is too many.
"We're here to win the league and we haven't really shown a top quality performance yet this season - we've been hampered a little bit by injuries, but I'm hoping that by the time we go to Sheffield United I'll have a stronger team to field and we can go on from there."
West Ham started well enough, going into the lead courtesy of a Teddy Sheringham goal following fine work by Nigel Reo-Coker, but Alan says:
"We were far from happy with the first half, but we adjusted things at half time, and looked better in the second half.
"We should have had chances to take the lead but didn't take them, and then Coventry went and scored with probably their only effort on goal in the second half - so we've only got ourselves to blame.
"I'll keep it private for now what I wasn't pleased with, but I didn't feel we passed the ball well at times; I expect a West Ham team to play better than that and there are a few individuals who can do better than they did - and they know that."
To add insult to injury, Steve Lomas faces a two match ban after being sent off when he expressed his dissatisfaction at a linesman's decision to give Coventry a throw after he had run forward a few yards with his own throw-in, and Alan adds:
"The loss of Steve Lomas at the end of the game was a double blow and he should know better than to be sent off in that manner.
"I didn't really see it but my gut feeling is that the linesman could have used a bit of common-sense; we were chasing a goal and the player has run down the line to take a throw-in, he was frustrated, but he didn't take that into consideration and that was my problem with the linesman at the end - he could have used his common sense and perhaps let it go, but it wasn't to be.
"I am concerned about the discipline; there were some bookings that were unnecessary, which is a problem, and we talked about the situation that occurred on Saturday.
"It's not a major problem for us because if you look at some teams in this league we're not nearly as cynical as some of them, but certainly some of our sillier bookings can be avoided."