Cole fired up for Chalrton clash

Carlton Cole is one of several Hammers set to return to his former club on Saturday when we take on Charlton Athletic at the Valley, and the 23-year-old striker is fired up for the occasion.

"There will be some added pressure but I'm excited to go back to my old club with my old manager," he said. "Hopefully the Charlton faithful won't batter me too much.

"But if they want to batter me, they can batter me. I'm going there to do a job. I'm going to play my heart out, do my best and try to get that win that we so desperately need."

Carlton hasn't played since our home defeat to Liverpool last month, when he picked up a calf injury.

"It was really disappointing," he admitted." I wanted to carry on the good form I was in. I want to do as well as I can and work as hard as I can for the manager. I give 110% every time I play. I really hope I get a run out on Saturday."

"We're all charged up to go there and get three points. We've taken a lot of stick but we know what's expected of us. We have to change the table and get the result we need. We don't want to leave it to the last few games to get a result because that will put too much pressure on."

Dispelling the notion that the team have been anything less than fully committed, Carlton said: "All the lads are working hard, we don't want to disappoint the manager, the staff and ourselves."

"But most importantly we don't want to disappoint the fans. We know how passionate they are and we need to be as passionate as them."

"There is a lot of talk that the players aren't trying hard enough, but we are. It's not just the fans who are affected by bad results, the players are too. The first few days after we lost to Watford were really hard. We were all really disappointed.

"But now we're looking forward to getting a result on Saturday. We've had some intensive training over the last two weeks and we're going to go out there and show what we've been working for."