This Year's Aim - A Major Trophy

In a statment to the West Ham official website Alan Pardew said West Ham's aim this season was to win a major trophy. He also gave a useful update on all the injured players,

"Obviously we are going to be without Deano for a few months but, all in all, the injury situation isn't terribly worrying," says Pards.

Matty Etherington isn't going to be ready for Saturday's game, but he has improved dramatically this week and we feel he has an outside chance of being ready for the next two matches.

Jonathan Spector is not yet available after his shoulder injury, but he trained today and so I would hope to see him back in action very soon.

Robert Green is also very close to full fitness, and he trained well on Thursday morning. I feel he is going to settle in well here, he has got a great opportunity but he will have to work very hard now to displace Roy Carroll.

Apart from those guys being absent, we are looking very good going into the new season. I would obviously prefer to have my strongest possible side available on Saturday, but I don't think we should be downbeat. We turned it around against Blackburn on the opening day last year, when we had a set-back at the start - I don't think we had a kick for the first 20 minutes - but then we clicked into gear.

The one thing I know about this team is that we have character. No team came from behind to win as many times as we did last season, we have that in our locker and we can always call upon it if needed. What I'm hoping is that we don't have to call upon it so often this year, so we get ourselves in a stronger position in terms of not conceding the first goal. Obviously we had some great results last season, but I'd like some more this season.

We must look on the positive side. We came within a coat of paint of winning a major trophy last season and you would have to say that has got to be our aim this year. Whether that puts pressure on us or not I don't care - I want us to move forward."