Pablo Zabaleta knows exactly what ingredients a team needs to finish high enough in the Premier League table to secure European qualification.
The full-back did in each of his final eight seasons with Manchester City, finishing in the top four on seven occasions.
After a difficult first campaign with West Ham United following his move to east London in 2017, Zabaleta and his Hammers teammates harboured hopes of returning to Europe after the arrival of Manuel Pellegrini and a host of new players last summer.
However, a succession of defeats in vital matches where victory would have seen the Irons rise to seventh in the standings – the latest of them coming at home to Everton on Saturday – has left the experienced Argentinian calling for a higher level of focus and consistency from Pellegrini’s squad.
We have lost so many opportunities to be in that seventh position and it shows a little bit the weak mentality that we have probably got and something we need to improve looking forward if we want to do a good season
Pablo Zabaleta
“We didn’t show any character,” the right-back lamented. “We were poor on the ball, we gave the ball away so cheaply, we didn’t create many chances, we were really poor at both ends of the pitch. It was a bad day, really.
“Personally, I am not happy at all because if you look at the season so far, we have not been consistent enough. As I said before, we have had three or four bad performances against teams around us. Winning two of those games, we’d be in seventh position now and it’s all about consistency.
“There are six teams outside the top six really close to each other and everyone can beat each other, so it’s all about one or two points difference between them.
“We have lost so many opportunities to be in that seventh position and it shows a little bit the weak mentality that we have probably got and something we need to improve looking forward if we want to do a good season. Our consistency needs to improve.
“If you want to play European football, you need to finish sixth or seventh in the Premier League and you need to do a really, really good season.
“At the moment, we are eleventh and I want to be in a better position, but the reality is that the three or four games we lost during the season really made a difference.
“Saturday was an awful performance, really. It was one of the worst of the season and I think there have been a few – Cardiff away, Wolverhampton at home at the beginning of the season, Wolverhampton away… there have been three or four really poor performances.
“I mean, you can win or lose games but the way we lost on Saturday was bad. We knew it was an important game to give us seventh position so it was a big game for both teams and Everton were all over the place and much better than us, honestly.”