West Ham United star Michail Antonio has stated that the team are losing this season due to a shift in mentality and has urged the London side to treat their next game as the first of the campaign.
A harrowing 4-2 defeat to West Brom on Saturday made it four defeats from the club’s opening five Premier League games, while Slaven Bilic’s charges have also been eliminated from the Europa League.
The level of defending in particular has been criticised, with the Hammers struggling to contain their Premier League rivals and conceding too many goals.
Antonio has been a rare bright spark for West Ham, with the former Nottingham Forest winger getting on the scoresheet again against the Baggies.
That makes it five goals for the campaign for the wideman, but the gifted Englishman has stated that the team’s progression on the pitch is more important than him finding the net.
“It’s the Premier League – if you make mistakes you will get punished,” Antonio told the club’s official website.
“Defensively we’re not doing it, going forward we are – but you can’t just blame defenders as we have to do it as a team.
“Right now, we have to start again. The Premier League season starts against Southampton – we have to start there and push on because right now it’s just not clicking together defensively.
“We don’t have the resilience we had last year and we need to get that back. We haven’t changed players, nothing’s changed – the only new player there is Arthur and he’s a quality left back.
“I don’t see what the difference is. It has to be mentality more than anything, because we haven’t changed players. We have to forget everything that’s happened and start again.
“We’ve all played the games to understand what we need and we have to perform on the day.
“Like I said last week, I’m not happy scoring when we’re losing – I’d rather not score and win. Hopefully I can score and win next week.”
