Allardyce eyes Southampton scalp

West Ham manager Sam Allardyce has labelled his team’s upcoming match against Southampton a ‘six-pointer’.

Allardyce’s side suffered defeat to Arsenal in their last league match at Upton Park but still sit comfortably in eighth place having collected 11 points from their first seven matches.

Southampton remain 17th after a tricky run of fixtures and Allardyce hopes to extend the gap between the promoted clubs when they meet in London.

“The first thing is looking at the international lads in the hope that they come back and are not injured,” Allardyce told West Ham’s official website.

“We need to bounce back from a disappointing result but a very gutsy performance and then get back on the victory trail at home.

“Southampton have not had the best of starts and have had some difficult games and have been conceding a number of goals and we’ve got to try and take advantage of that.

“From our point of view we’d like to beat them on the basis that we have both been promoted and we both know how much of a struggle it is in year one. If you can pick up points from teams of similar standing to you then you take three points and they don’t get any points.

“It’s almost a six-pointer this early in the season. If we win, they’d only have four points and we’d have 14 and that’s a massive gap that they’d have to try and close over the coming games.”

Southampton took four points off of West Ham in the Championship last season and Allardyce recognised that Nigel Adkins’ side would be confidently targeting more points on Saturday.

“They’ve had some hard fixtures and they beat us away and then drew with us at Upton Park so they will be thinking that it is a good chance for them to come and get some points so we’ve got to try to stop that,” he said.

“We’ve played some good football and played one of the big boys and even though we lost the fans were right behind us until the end.

“It (the support of the fans) gives us a good platform to beat the opposition. It intimidates the opposition and it is hugely supportive for us.

“That can help to give us that extra drive to get the positive result.”