Aaron Cresswell: West Ham deserve to play European football, that’s the target

Aaron Cresswell believes West Ham will recover from their poor start to the season, insisting the club “deserve” to be playing European football.

The Hammers were thrashed 5-1 by Liverpool at Anfield on Wednesday as they exited the Carabao Cup at the third-round stage.

It leaves them with just two wins from seven matches in all competitions this season.

It has been a difficult start to life at the club for new head coach Julen Lopetegui, whose side are not involved in European competition for the first time in four seasons.

“We’re all absolutely gutted with the result, because of the support we had,” Cresswell said after the heavy loss at Anfield.

“There were just under 6,000 fans here tonight, which is incredible, but we will do our best to improve and start turning things around.

“It isn’t the start [to the season] that we wanted, and we want to be further up the table and competing at the top and challenging for Europe again. We had three fantastic seasons there, and that is where the club deserves to be. It’s what we are striving for.”

Cresswell does see signs of improvement, though, despite heavy defeats to Chelsea and Liverpool within the space of four days.

He said: “We are progressing behind the scenes and working hard, there is no doubt about that. We’ve had some tough fixtures and some bad results, and we know we’ve got to pick it up.

“We’ve got two massive games now before the international break, and we’ve got to go there and stay positive, stay together, stick together as a Club and keep moving forward.”