West Ham United simply have to get a result against Sunderland this afternoon or I will completely lose any hope of survival.

There isn’t much going on at West Ham at the moment to give us hope of turning our season around, but two victories in a row, two London derby wins in a row, one against our biggest modern rivals, and one to get us into the next round of the cup.

These two wins were a confidence booster, but I’m not going to lie, they are two matches I actually expected us to win, obviously one Championship team in QPR and Spurs, well they’re awful at the moment and can’t buy a win at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

So, to be honest while back to back wins has boosted our confidence as a team hopefully, it hasn’t really changed my stance on our potential relegation.

It was great to see the team in excellent spirits welcoming back our AFCON winner El Hadji Malick Diouf, seeing that really made me realise how together the team are, how much all of them (bar Paqueta) want to fight for this team and the manager.

This Sunderland match is the chance to prove that, the chance to give the Hammers faithful something that will give them some real hope because we need it.

The Black Cats  come into this one in not so great form, just one win in their last five. However, they have picked up three draws and just one defeat in that time, which is why they’re Eno tin danger, because most of our close games that should be draws end in defeat.

They currently sit ninth in the table which is incredible considering they just got promoted this year, they have also missed a lot players due to AFCON recently, which could explain their dip in form.

However, those players are back now, so players like Habib Diarra will be beginning to find their feet in a red and white shirt again which could be dangerous for the Hammers.

Look, I’m really not expecting us to beat Sunderland, they are a better team than us. However, we’re five points adrift, Forest have a better run of fixtures than us coming up, we’re at home, we’re coming off the back of two wins in a row, we have to win this one.

We’ve got Chelsea away next, this is more winnable than that, these are a mid table team, you simply have to beat mid table teams at home when you’re in a relegation battle like we are.

Lets hope the boys can go out there and get a result, a draw wouldn’t be an awful result depending on how Forest get on at Brentford, we just need to be making up points on them, but three points is certainly what we have to be aiming for today.