West Ham players get first taste of David Moyes' and Stuart Pearce

On Monday the West Ham United players enjoyed their first taste of David Moyes’ and his new assistant coaches’ training methods. One of the biggest complaints about the old regime was that our players were lacking fitness; last season Reece Oxford famously remarked that Championship Reading trained harder than he was used to.

The first training sessions occurred under the new coaching staff. Alan Irvine, Stuart Pearce and Billy McKinlay have all been named as Moyes’ assistant coaches following the departure of Slaven Bilic and his team.

It’s hard to imagine our players would be allowed to coast under Stuart Pearce, the former West Ham player was known as a hard man - he enjoyed successful managerial spells with England’s Under 21 and the Great Britain Olympic football team.

With several Hammers currently on international duty, the coaching staff will not get a chance to work with the full squad until later this week.

Pearce issued a rallying cry to the players, telling the club website:

“David [Moyes] is acutely aware – as we all are – of exactly where the club are at this moment in time.

“It’s not going to be easy, no one is expecting it to be, because the stakes are very high in the Premier League, but I think with the staff here and the squad of players, we have a great chance.

“The main thing is to enhance the togetherness at the club. I’ve watched West Ham a lot from the outside, because it’s one of my former clubs, I probably keep a closer eye on things.

“I’ve seen a lot of them this season – I covered the Tottenham game at Wembley and the Liverpool game last week, and it is clear that everyone needs galvanizing.

“Confidence has been dented and that is part of the task, to get that back on track. We need to find that togetherness again and the players are the most powerful ones of all in showing that.”

Anyone who has even watched West Ham in passing this season would have noticed a stark lack of confidence from the squad. We hope that a change in leadership can galvanise the team, Pearce added:

“I’ve been doing one day a week this season at Portsmouth, helping out Kenny Jackett, who is a good friend, and I guess that has probably sparked my excitement again in regards to coaching.

“The media work has been good for me, but I really feel that I’ve got something to offer the coaching set-up here.

“It’s an opportunity to work in the Premier League again, with a good squad of players – it was too good to turn down.”