Manuel Pellegrini spoke to the media ahead of his West Ham United team’s Premier League trip to Wolverhampton Wanderers on Tuesday evening.
The Hammers will be looking to bounce back from consecutive away defeats at AFC Bournemouth in the league and AFC Wimbledon in the Emirates FA Cup when they take to the pitch at Molineux.
Here’s what the boss had to say…
The manner of our FA Cup defeat still hurts
I was not happy with the way we were knocked out of the FA Cup by AFC Wimbledon after the game on Saturday and I think exactly the same way now, because you can be eliminated, that's football, but of course when you are eliminated by a team at the bottom of League One it was not good for us at all.
Normally, after those kind of defeats, of course we have more inspiration for the next game. We have a lot of excuses, but I never want to use them, but we have had 15 players that have played 12 games or more in less than two months.
So they thought that even with running less they could win but, in football, without running you cannot win.
Especially in the Premier League, December and January are very difficult months, that's why for one side you are very angry because we lost but, on the other side, we have had the same players for all these games and have given everything they have.
This month, we hope that we can recover a couple players more from injury, not many because most are long injuries, but for now we need to do our best for the last 15 games.
We must improve our consistency
I expect a reaction following the Wimbledon game when we travel to Wolverhampton Wanderers in Tuesday night, of course.
We need one because the motivation of the Premier League, against Wolves, will be different. That does not mean the FA Cup did not motivate us, but maybe less so, and that is what made the difference. When you play the Premier League it is different, as every game is a final.
Our consistency is one of the things we must improve.
We have played some very good games this season, we have beaten Arsenal and the best teams and then after that, we haven't been able to play two or three games in the same way apart from in December when we won four games in a row.
There are a lot of things we must improve and one of those is consistency.
We are in the fight for seventh place
The race for seventh place is not against Wolverhampton only, but against all the teams in that mid-table position because, unless something very strange happens the top six positions are already confirmed.
I think Everton, Wolverhampton, Leicester, Watford and our team are fighting for the seventh position and Wolverhampton are one of our rivals.