Home Is Where The Heart Is

Alan Pardew is hoping that West Ham can start to turn around the home form - starting with Rotherham on Saturday.

"Defensively we don't look as sound at home as we do away and that is a mental thing - it can't be that we can't do it because we are doing it away on a regular basis," he explains.

"I am seeing a side that looks comfortable away from home; it is a different side at home and we need to bury the hoodoo and the demons we carry at home.

"Over the last couple of seasons I know it has been difficult at Upton Park for this team to sustain good home form but we have to strive for that because once we start to win games at home the place will start to come back to us and people will start to fear us.

"But at the moment people probably can't wait to come and play us here; it is all well and good talking about our mentality but the mentality of the teams that are coming is not 'oh we are coming to West Ham and are fearful' - they are thinking 'if we can come and keep it tight they are going to go to pieces at some point and we are going to win the game'.

"It gives them added mental strength, the fact that we are not winning at home and it is a vicious circle.

"And, like all vicious circles that you have in your work place, there is only one way to resolve them, and that is for the people involved to turn it around - and that is our job.

"You are still looking at the players when they cross the line to be strong enough and that is the challenge of the players, whoever I put out there.

"We have tried a couple of different systems at home and tried to give them positive changes; I am not saying, though, that we are not at fault in all this because you can't put everything on the players.

"I shall look at our preparation for the next home game and I certainly have a couple of ideas which I don't really want to share too much publicly.

"But we will be training at the ground and will be trying to make it feel comfortable to us and erase with managerial tactics some of the fears that the players must have.

"It is not as if the players are not trying to deal with it - of course they are.

"It is not just the players, it is all of us and we all must take responsibility."