Monday 21 December 2015 08:32, UK
West Ham manager Slaven Bilic has praised his team's character and is hopeful of seeing his injured players return to the pitch.
The Hammers lie in eighth place in the table and four points off the Champions League places following their 0-0 draw against Swansea City at the Liberty Stadium, however they have not won in seven games and drawn each of their last four.
Bilic's side were forced to defend for large periods of the game against the managerless Swans and only had 27% of possession in the game.
But the Hammers boss is not too concerned and acknowledges having lost a lot of his flair players, a solid showing in South Wales was a decent return.
Top scorer Dimitri Payet and fellow forwards Andy Carroll, Manuel Lanzini and Victor Moses are all absent and Bilic insists that once they return his team will be more of an attacking force.
"It was a good point for us. A third clean sheet in a row so we defended really well," said Bilic.
"They were better the first 20 minutes after that we came into it. I have to praise the character and the spirit of the team and I think we deserved the point.
"I want to praise the team because we were really hit with these injuries to players who are good on the ball, who are dangerous when we have the ball and who are the most important when we have the ball.
"The only way we can compensate that loss is with team work and that is exactly what we have done these three games. We needed to defend against them. I'm very pleased with the way we played the game."
Bilic did not see the incident that could have seen Swansea awarded a penalty after the ball struck the trailing arm of James Collins, who had thrown himself into the path of the ball, but he did have promising words about his injured stars returning.
"I want to praise the players that played but we knew that for us that with Payet, with Lanzini, with (Diafra) Sakho, with Moses, with (Enner) Valencia totally fit it's a completely different story when we have the ball but the guys who played did really good," he added.
"It looks like a couple of them could be back quite soon, maybe one could be back against Villa. Payet probably back for Liverpool, then hopefully after that Moses. Sakho will be the only one left out until February. So a couple of games more and they will start to come back."
