West Ham United manager Sam Allardyce wants his players to focus on their job in hand and put the Southampton result at the back of their mind when Hull City visit the Boleyn Ground on Saturday.
With West Ham just two points off Southampton and an automatic promotion place there is all to play for at Saturday's Season Finale, for which there just 250 tickets left. Big Sam wants his squad to making sure they take the three points from Hull first and foremost, before they think of any slip up by the Saints, who play host to Coventry City.
How are the nerves approaching Saturday?
SA: I don't think we are too nervous because we only have slim chance. Most of the pressure lies with Southampton on the day because they have more to lose than we do. We have to rely on Coventry doing a big favour for us at St Marys which is going to be difficult.
But you never know do you? Anything can happen under the pressures of a final game of the season when so much is at stake. There can be a twist and a turn along the way and if there is and it's in our favour we must make sure we are in a position to take advantage.
We need to focus on getting a result against Hull by 3-0 or more. So from the very start it's a difficult task for us but it's a task we must try and meet. Only after we have done that can we look to see how Southampton have faired against Coventry. Winning by three or more is our only objective for Saturday right now.
Do you think a draw is the more likely result than a Coventry win at St Mary's?
SA: Everyone will look at their away record and see it hasn't been that great this year. But then again we didn't expect to draw against Doncaster Rovers or against Watford but we did so you never know. If Coventry are going to do us a favour I think a draw is as much as we can ask for. I'm sure the fans will keep us in touch on Saturday, if we get the right kind of roar I think we will know is what happening at Southampton.
We are going to have to try and emulate the type of start we had against Brighton to give ourselves a fighting chance. If we don't get the result and Coventry have managed to get one then that will be a big disappointment. We need to do our job properly.
The 6-0 win over Brighton at home shows that the goalscoring jinx has gone?
SA: Yes it was a great start to the game and a terrific performance over all. Aside from some other excellent results at home, the win against Brighton was the best this season. That is what we must do against Hull.
Our Leicester performance showed we can handle the end of season pressure. It was a mature and quality performance by the entire team that gave us our just rewards. A win is what we wanted and a win is what we got to take it to the final day of the season.
As slim a chance as it is we want to put ourselves in a position where we can take advantage of any slip by Southampton.
Is the message to the players that you cannot be distracted on Saturday by what is happening elsewhere?
SA: Yes we will handle it as professionally as we did against Leicester and hopefully produce that type of performance again. If we take our chances then we should have enough to beat Hull - it's by how many that is the question. To stand a good chance of getting into that second spot we need to score three to get ahead on goal difference.
We must be careful with regards to injuries and sending-offs. If things don't go our way on Saturday we will have a game on Thursday so we must make sure that we keep as near to full strength squad as we can.
Our momentum is fantastic at the moment we have only lost one game in 17 so hopefully we can take that forward into the Play-Offs if needs be. As I said what we don't want to happen on Saturday is to come off the field having not taken advantage of a slip up by Southampton. That would be my biggest concern; we need to win the game and then we can look towards the Southampton result.
With a need to score goals on Saturday, will we see a more attacking line up?
SA: I don't think so because I think we create more chances than any team in this division anyway. Our ratio of attempts at goal is probably the greatest in the division our problem has been the percentage we have converted into goals, hence why we are where we are.
Any team news ahead of the final game?
SA: I think Nicky Maynard, Joey O'Brien and John Carew may miss out through injury. But we have George McCartney back in training, which is fantastic news. McCartney has been one of our most consistent players this season so it's great to have him back for the final game. Other than that I think we have a good squad to choose from.
