Zola to reflect on defeat

Gianfranco Zola has said he will consider over the weekend how to react after a sixth successive "painful" defeat for West Ham United.

The manager reiterated that he would be committed to the cause until "I see that I cannot do a good job for this club", after repeatedly being asked to clarify his future. "I am here just for that," he added. "I have no other agendas other than doing a good job for this club, so I will consider overnight whether I am doing a good job or not."

Zola has though turned his attentions to the trip to Everton on Sunday week and stressed that he believed he had the support from his team to turn things around. "The players are behind us. I just think we need to change something to be more helpful to them.

"Six defeats with a difficult game coming on Sunday is not great, but as I said, looking out there, the players are committed and we're going to be working on making that commitment more effective."

Despite going down 1-0 to Stoke City, it was a different contest than the 3-1 reverse at hands of Wolves on Tuesday. "The good thing was that at least the team performed better as a team. We just couldn't get the final touch. The end product was not as good as I expected it to be and that was the difference, really.

"We had better team shape and we tried really hard. [Stoke scorer Ricardo] Fuller made a difference when he came on with a piece of quality. Sometimes in games, especially when they are in a tight situation like this one, one bit of quality can make the difference and that was definitely the case.

"Looking at the results, I can honestly say no [I'm not getting the best out of the players], but there are circumstances. As I said, that's one of the considerations that I have to make. I'm not looking for excuses - we are not performing as well as we should and I take responsibility for that, so we need to improve them.

"Right now, I'm flat because we lost another game and that was the sixth game in a row that we have lost and that's not good for me. I have to see what the problem is. I'm not doing any other considerations other than finding out the problems."

He was full of praise for the supporters who backed the team despite yet another disappointment. "The fans have been very good and I have to say 'Thank you very much' to them. That was a good response. It was a pity we could not give them what they were looking for."