James Ward-Prowse feels his West Ham United team need to show more competitiveness if they are to take their good work from pre-season into the 2025/26 campaign – starting in Tuesday’s Carabao Cup tie at Wolverhampton Wanderers.
The Irons showed plenty of positive signs over the summer, yet have tasted defeat in both of their first two Premier League games of the season and have conceded eight goals in the process.
Five of those came in Friday night’s home loss to Chelsea and, for Ward-Prowse, the first thing that needs to be addressed is the ease in which the goals have been given away.
“I think the league is incredibly competitive,” the veteran of over 400 Premier League appearances reflected. “You can talk about tactics, you can talk about formations, set-pieces, whatever, but I think you need that competitiveness in the team.
“You need to be difficult to beat, you need to be able to be in and around it and if you don't do that, no matter who you play, whether you play Sunderland or Chelsea, you're going to come up against it.
“We've been caught out twice now, the only positive is that it's happened in the first two games and that gives us a chance to have another wake-up call because Friday night was nowhere near good enough.”
Ward-Prowse is adamant that the Irons will still take the positive energy they generated from four victories over five matches in pre-season into the competitive action.
The next opportunity to do that comes at Molineux, where Ward-Prowse scored the Irons’ winner direct from a corner in April 2024.
The Hammers midfielder reiterated that victories would only come, however, with doing the basics of the game correctly.
“I think pre-season has given us a really good foundation going into the season and there is a lot of positivity,” he continued. “I just feel as a team we need to be more difficult to beat and compete more.
“It’s difficult to draw any positives out of Friday, but I think in every experience that happens in life, you have to look at it and try and take something from it and I think that's what we need to do.
“But equally, I'm sure fans will watch this and be fed up of people talking and be wanting to show something.
“So that's ultimately the best way to talk is by your actions on the pitch and that's something that we need to put into place as soon as possible.
“I think no matter what competition we're playing in, it's a good chance to turn things around and get that competitiveness back in the team. So we’re looking forward to that at Wolves."
