Defender Dinos Mavropanos is confident West Ham United can build on the positives from Sunday’s narrow defeat at Liverpool and produce a strong finish to the 2024/25 campaign, starting at home to Southampton this weekend.
The Hammers welcome the already-relegated Saints to London Stadium on Easter Saturday looking to turn around a run of five games without victory that has left them 17th in the standings with six fixtures remaining.
Fourteen points does separate West Ham and Ipswich Town in the first of the three relegation places however, while the congested ranks above them mean they could move up to 13th with a win back on home soil, if results go our way.
After running title favourites Liverpool agonisingly close last time out, with Virgil van Dijk striking a last-gasp winner after an Andrew Robertson own-goal had cancelled out Luis Díaz’s opener, Mavropanos believes his team are better than the table suggests, and firmly has his eyes focused on a fast finish.
“We have to look at the Liverpool performance and keep going at that level, because that is the sort of standard we have to set,” the Greece international said. “I definitely think we deserved more from that game, and it’s just another point of a season in which we have had a lot of ups and downs.
“For us, it’s all about keeping working and trying to get better. Sometimes we haven’t played how we want, but on Sunday we did well and now we just need to make sure we’re at that level again on Saturday.
“We still have six games left, and we have lots of belief that we’re capable of getting many points. That is the aim now, as well as finishing as high up the table as possible.”
Though he recognises there are no easy games in the Premier League, Mavropanos is hoping the Irons can build on recent defensive and offensive improvements, against a Southampton team who have scored the fewest and conceded the most goals of any top-flight team this term.
West Ham conjured up eleven shots against Liverpool at Anfield, and hit the woodwork twice, and while they aim to create more attacking opportunities our No15 is eyeing a first clean sheet since the win over Leicester City in late February.
Mavropanos, who completed the full 90 minutes of the 1-0 win in the reverse fixture against Saturday’s opponents, said: “We’re doing better in all areas of the pitch, and we just need to keep that going now. Against Liverpool, in the first half we created some good opportunities in attack, and showed some really good build-up.
“Then in the second half we were much better, we created a lot of chances and were very strong defensively. We didn’t allow them to play their proper game, and ultimately we were all very disappointed to come away from the game with nothing.
“We know it’s going to be another, different test against Southampton on Saturday, but we will try to play our own game and reward our supporters with the three points.”
