Pre-Match Stats: Swansea City vs West Ham United

“It is important to bring someone in sooner rather than later, but it is more important to get the right man. If that takes a while then we are happy to carry on – and we assume we will be in charge”.

Swansea had the ascendancy for large parts of the match, but failed to find the clinical touch in the final third, with Andre Ayew going closest with a looped header that landed on top of the West Ham goal. We are there, but in the quality of the last two performances, whoever does come in will be confident they can lift us up the table.

West Ham United manager Slaven Bilic says his players are positive about getting a result against Swansea City on Sunday (December 20) despite failing to pick up a win in their last three games.

West Ham presented HHH with his very own shirt, which he shared on Twitter with the caption: ‘Thanks for the jersey @whufc_official…

Okay… yeah, I see where he was going with this.

Hammers centre-half Collins clearly handled Ki Sung-yueng’s shot just past the hour-mark, but neither referee Lee Mason nor his assistants saw it as Swansea penalty appeals were waved away.

The teams last played in January this year and the game ended in a 1 – 1 draw.

West Ham United is eighth in the league with 24 points having won 6 games, drawn 6 and lost 4.

However, the longer Chelsea’s logic-defying search for points continues, the closer they come to being considered genuine candidates for the drop to England’s second tier.

“I think we tried to over-emphasise the fact we want to keep the ball again, that we want to pass it round, and possibly we haven’t done that over the past few months. We just need that good fortune”. It’s unclear as to whether the system isn’t working, or the players are suffering a complete lack of confidence.

“If you remember what I said three or four weeks ago when the injuries hit us, I said the only way we could compensate was by producing a team performance and that is exactly what we have done in the last three games”.

“We’re keeping clean sheets, we’re working hard for each other”.