Pellegrini denies feeling pressure at West Ham slump

West Ham are seven games without a win, including their EFL Cup defeat at Oxford, but boss Manuel Pellegrini denies he is feeling the pressure.

"For me, the pressure that I'm feeling at the moment is exactly the same that I was feeling on the first day at West Ham. I try to grow one step more with this club, not just fighting relegation. We try to improve how we're playing.

"Tottenham is a special game, but it is not the last game. It is not enough to beat Tottenham and then be in 14th or 15th position in the table. That's my challenge and now we have to play against Tottenham - a special game, we try to win - but I try to involve all the players and grow them with a winning mentality, with a big club that has 60,000 fans each game."

"Of course it was very unexpected because we finished last season very well and were playing well this season also. For different reasons we must find why we didn't continue playing in the same way and winning games. Especially against Palace and Sheffield United at home, there were games we deserved a better result.

"The Premier League this year is very tight - within three points there are eight teams. We must try to recover our performance, and I hope that this will be a good game to try to return to winning our home games.

"I trust a lot in our players because we have shown a lot of times we can do it against big teams. Over the international break we had time to talk about a lot of things with the players. I hope that tomorrow we will see the West Ham we saw at the beginning of the season."