Sam Allardyce is hoping for some good fortune over the Christmas period
Allardyce admits that the Hammers have exceeded expectations in the first half of the season, but believes that how they come through the next month will give a true indication of what the east London club are capable of achieving.
And while the traditional festive fixtures are favourites with the fans, Allardyce says that he’ll be crossing his fingers that his squad remains in tact throughout January.
He said: “I want to keep the shape of our season as high as it is at the moment
“I think we’ve achieved great things over the last 16 games, we’ve got one defeat in 10 matches which is an exceptionally good record.
“I think we’re all looking forward to the games over Christmas even though it’s a very strenuous period for the players particularly.
“Playing so many games over such a short period of time, which is not what all European clubs do, but something that we have to do by tradition.
“We’ll have to rotate the team because there’ll be fatigue, there’ll be injuries, there’ll be hopefully good results.
“You keep your fingers crossed more than ever before. There’s no preparation, you just play, recover, play, recover, play, recover.
Allardyce wants West Ham players to enjoy success [AMBIENT]
You keep your fingers crossed more than ever before. There’s no preparation, you just play, recover, play, recover, play, recover.
Sam Allardyce
“There’s little or nothing you can do about it except keep your players as fit as you can.
“At the end of January when we come out of that we may have a different goal to set for this season. We may have a much higher goal to try and achieve than we thought at the start.”
And while many Hammers fans will be relishing the derbies against Chelsea and Arsenal, Allardyce claims that this Saturday’s match against Leicester could be the club’s most important of the season.
He said: “Leicester we’re looking forward to and then obviously to two of the London boys in a short period of time - Chelsea and Arsenal - but Leicester, for me, is the most important game of the season.
“They’re a team that are trying extremely hard and are extremely difficult to beat because even though they haven’t won since Manchester United, they very rarely lose by more than the odd goal.
“There’s a lot of dangers in Nigel’s side that we’ve got to be very well aware of.
“We can’t take them as if they’re just going to come and lie down, they won’t, so we’ve got full focus on the right performance to get the right result on Saturday to move on from there.”
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