West Ham find fighting spirit as the Premier League survival race heats up

As we head into the deciding point of our season, the pressure is on to outperform Forest, Spurs and Leeds.

But one thing that this year has taught us so far, is that it’s never over, regardless of how hopeless it all looks.

At the start of the year, things couldn’t have looked worse for us and not even the most optimistic of fans were able to find hope. We had zero momentum, players looked broken and relegation looked inevitable.

The Turning Point: Cup Wins and a Shift in Momentum

So what’s given us this confidence that things might actually be ok?

The January transfer window was our glimmer of hope that had the potential to rescue us, but a fast start slowed down and ended up feeling rather anticlimactic.

And then, when everything felt doomed, something unexpected happened, we started picking up wins.

It turns out results really do make all of the difference, because you could feel the shift from us all reluctantly watching games to looking forward to them again.

At the time, a lot of us wondered whether the FA Cup win against QPR was papering over the cracks, but our upturn in form then translated to the Premier League, bringing us back within reaching distance of 17th.

At the time of writing, we have a chance of escaping the relegation zone; something that we couldn’t have dreamed of just a couple of months ago. Now, I think we have a great shot of staying up.

Nuno’s Blueprint: Defensive Solidity and Finding Our Best XI

But what will determine our Premier League survival? I don’t think this upturn has been by chance.

Nuno inherited a very broken squad, and despite a lot of question marks over squad selection and tactics, it does feel as though he’s building something.

We know how important momentum is and gradually, we’re watching players grow in confidence, we’re seeing more movement off the ball and piecing together well-designed attacks, all of which is leading to us scoring.

But the major issue for the entire season has been our defending. Again, Nuno seems to be finding a solution when it comes to the defence that’s cost us so much.

Hermansen returning between the sticks is something that would have filled us with terror at the start of the season, yet now, the introduction of him alongside new centre-back, Disasi, has led to us getting clean sheets.

We seem to know our best starting XI and can clearly see that a 4-4-2 formation suits us best, so the mission is to keep getting better throughout our final games of the season.

The Final Push for Survival and the 40-Point Mark

Things really are looking up, but the pressure is now on to get better results than those around us in the table.

If we’re able to win the games that we ‘should’ and snatch a couple of points from more difficult fixtures, the 40-point mark is well within our reach. Maybe, just maybe, we have a chance.