Alan: It Takes Time

Alan Pardew admits West Ham have not reached the standards required thus far this season - and concedes that the acqusition of top players is a gradual process.

"I think everybody who has seen West Ham play - and I am talking about all year, not just my period here - would know we just haven't been good enough.

"Let's not get carried away with our season, we have just been slightly under what we have needed to be all through it, though now we are a little bit further away than that," he says candidly.

"We have got to address that; there is no point going on if you are not good enough, which is what the facts suggest.

"We have got to change that and if we can't put a run together with the faces we have got we have to bring a couple of new faces in, whichever way that is possible.

"But we all need to face that the players we are going to bring in are not going to be Kanoute or Sinclair - we are going to have to build back up to those sorts of players and the ability to bring those sort of players back.

"It might be a process of taking players that we can afford who are good enough to get us out of this division and then, once we get ourselves stable and strong again, we can start looking for the superstars that the fans here deserve."