Terzic eyes greater consistency

First-team coach Edin Terzic says West Ham United will be seeking more consistent form and results after the international break
First-team coach Edin Terzic says West Ham United will be seeking greater consistency as the Hammers look to build on their encouraging start to the season.

West Ham travel across London to high-flying Crystal Palace on Saturday sitting in sixth place after eight Barclays Premier League matches, and seeking add to the ten points they have collected from their opening four away games.

At the same time, Terzic says the Hammers are also eager to improve their home form, having collected just four points from four league matches at the Boleyn Ground.

“We’ve started with a lot of ups and downs,” Terzic told West Ham TV, “with some great games, especially away, and some bad results at home which need to be improved.

“If you compare our performances between the pre-season and now, we have improved a lot, but we need to be more consistent and try also to show the performances we showed at Anfield, the Etihad and the Emirates at home. We need to give this stadium the credit it deserves.”

So, after eight games, how does Terzuc assess West Ham’s start to the 2015/16 campaign?

“We definitely want to do better, because you always want to do better. We have always had similar games – either we’ve been winning early in the games, like we did at Arsenal, Liverpool, Man City and home to Newcastle by scoring the first goal and producing a good performance, or we have been losing and two-down.

“Sometimes we have come back very well, and other times it has taken a bit longer to come back and we came back in the second half, but they were the similar style of games.

“We have to find a way in between to have a good game for the whole 90 minutes. Of course we would like to score the first goal in every game, so we need to defend better.”

Terzic has been joined in the dugout by fellow Croatian Nikola Jurcevic, who has arrived at the Club as assistant manager.

The former national-team player assisted Slaven Bilic with Croatia, Lokomotiv Moscow and Besiktas – working alongside Terzic with the latter – and the first-team coach says he is a hugely positive addition to the Hammers coaching staff.

“He is definitely bringing his experience, because he played and managed at the top level and he definitely has great experience,” Terzic confirmed. “Nikola is very good and close with the players and is good for us on a daily basis.

“During the break, we have got more time to talk to the players who are not with their national teams and we can do more individual work, so it’s definitely helped us.”

*West Ham will travel to Crystal Palace on Saturday at 3pm, and you can follow the game live across our digital and social media channels throughout matchday!