Taylor eyes Potters points

Matt Taylor is hoping that history will repeat itself on Saturday when West Ham United journey to the Britannia Stadium to play Stoke City in the Barclays Premier League.

The midfielder has little memory of last season's 1-0 victory against the Potters, after coming off worse in a collision with Peter Crouch's boot which resulted in his removal from the game after just ten minutes.

His replacement that day, Jack Collison, struck the only goal of the game to give the Hammers all three points and Taylor is hoping for a similar outcome this time around.

He told West Ham TV: "We want to go up there and try to reproduce the performance we gave last year, obviously not for me personally as I think I lasted about eight minutes before I got carried off.

"It's going to be an extremely difficult game, Mark Hughes has got them playing very well, very resolute in defence and they've also got goalscorers so it will be a difficult game.

"All we can do is try and replicate the performances we have done away from home recently and we'll give ourselves a good chance of picking up some points."

Taylor and his teammates head into Saturday's clash on the back of their first defeat in five league matches, with a late Romelu Lukaku strike proving to be their downfall last time out.

Defeat at Goodison Park came after four straight wins and according to Taylor the loss has done little to damage the confidence built by their recent run of good form.

"The mood's good, obviously we're all disappointed that we didn't pick up anything at Everton but the boys are in good spirits.

"We're arguably in the best form of our season so far, we probably didn't cover ourselves in glory up at Everton, but having said that, we should have come away with a result which we didn't do.

"We were resolute in defence, but probably didn't offer enough in attack and that's something which I'm sure we'll be working to improve that and hopefully we can put in an attacking performance against Stoke on Saturday."

The aforementioned wins against Swansea City, Aston Villa, Norwich City and Southampton helped put the Hammers into the top ten, a position they hold going into this weekend's fixtures.

Taylor believes the run has helped the confidence come flooding back to the Hammers, but insists there is more work to be done from now until the end of the season.

"It gives you momentum, winning games, scoring goals, it does give you confidence. Confidence is key in any sport, especially in football.

"The team's playing well, the team spirit's fantastic and we've picked up some good results, but you can't go through a year and pick places where you're going to get results, that's not the way the Premier League works.

"You need to respect every team that you play against and you need to go into every game believing you can win. That goes for playing against Manchester United or Hull or Sunderland or anyone else that you're playing.

"We've got to do that, and if we do then I believe we'll pick up more points than we lose towards the end of the season."