Lee Bowyer made his long-awaited return to first team action on Sunday against Tottenham but he admits it took him a while to recover from the heartbreak of losing the match in the final seconds of injury time.
"The result was very disappointing," he said. "To be leading 2-0 at half-time and then to be 3-2 up with five minutes to go and to lose, it took a long time for the players to get over that one.
"It took me two or three days to accept that we'd lost the game. The lads showed good attitude and tried hard and I think the crowd recognized that."
Despite the result, Lee was happy to take the positives from the game. "I think there were a lot of pluses, even though we lost," he admitted. "We needed to show a bit of fight and we did. You have to be big and strong and be counted at the most important times.
"This is an important time, we have to start winning and we all have to stick together and work hard for each other. We did that on Sunday but we have to do that for the rest of the season and hope things go our way."
In the meantime Lee is just pleased to be off the sidelines and involved in the action again.
"It's horrible watching because I support West Ham, this is where I grew up and the last thing I want to see is for us to struggle," he said. "It's just so frustrating because there's no way it should happen. At the moment we're bottom and it's heartbreaking because the supporters give their all.
"But there are a lot of positives. We'll go to
Blackburn a week on Saturday and all we can do is try. We need a
bit of luck and we need results to go our way. We'll just keep
going and hopefully things will work out well."