West Ham captain Mark Noble believes the philosophy of manager Manuel Pellegrini is starting to take effect at the club.
Pellegrini took charge of West Ham in the summer, but was under immediate scrutiny after four PremierLeague defeats to start the season.
However, West Ham have since recovered from their slow start, with three wins from their last five matches moving them up to 13th in the table.
Noble says the upturn in form proves the club are adapting to Pellegrini’s methods, but the West Ham skipper stressed they are far from the finished article.
“Obviously it takes time,” Noble told. “You look at teams like Liverpool with Jurgen Klopp, the first season he came I think we beat them three times that year. The chances of that now are not really high against one of these teams.
“It takes time. The manager came in and we had loads of new players and new staff, he completely changed the way we played and defended.
“That’s not easy changing all that overnight. We’re far from the finished article, but we’re slowly moving in the right direction.
“We work on the way the manager wants to play every day. It’s definitely going to take a season for sure.
“If you look at teams like Manchester City – I’m not comparing us to them or Liverpool – but in a project it does take time sometimes. Hopefully we’re going through that period now.”
WestHam brushed off a 4-0 loss at home to champions Manchester City with back-to-back victories at Newcastle and at home to Cardiff.
Forward Marko Arnautovic went off injured in the win at Newcastle – and looks set to be out for a “while” – but Noble says the recent goalscoring contributions of Lucas Perez and Javier Hernandez have helped ease the blow.
“With the gaffer the thing that he’s made clear is, no matter who we’re playing against we’re going to try and win,” Noble added.
“Against Manchester City, I know the win for them looked convincing, but we did have a few chances, probably the most trouble we’ve caused them from any team this year.
“But then you go to Newcastle away and they had three wins in a row, and we won convincingly there before another good performance against Cardiff at home.
“We lost Marko for hopefully not too long, but then you have Lucas and Chichi [Javier Hernandez] come in and do fantastic for us. Hopefully we can stay on this roll.”
