West Ham boss Avram Grant insists that his side will not be bottom of the table for long.

HAMMERS boss Avram Grant has insisted that his team are on the way up, despite returning to the foot of the Premier League table on Saturday.

Everton’s win at Birmingham condemned West Ham to the bottom, but there is no sense of panic from the veteran Israeli.

“We are not a team to be at the bottom of the league,” insisted Grant. “We are not a team who will face relegation – we play a lot better than that.”

With the memories of last season’s battle against the drop still fresh in the fans’ minds, they will not want to go through that again.

Grant knows how they feel after suffering the ignominy of the drop with Portsmouth last season, but he is adamant it will not happen again.

“Last year my team was not just bottom of the league, there was a whole package of problems, every week there was more problems.

“West Ham do not want to be at the bottom at the end of the season, this is our target and to do it in the right way.”

Things have certainly improved at Upton Park recently as West Ham have embarked on a run of four games without defeat, and the manager is convinced that has a lot to do with the transfer window closing.

“It has been a lot easier to focus since the 31st of August, because there were a lot of question marks over who is going and who is coming,” explained the manager.

“We want to keep on improving the spirit in our squad, the way we play football and our character and I think we are doing that in the right way.

“You need to do something to take the points, there are a lot of teams in our area and one win can move us forward.”

West Ham will have to wait a week before they can put that into practice because of the internationals, but a trip to Wolves beckons on October 16, the only away ground where they managed a victory last season.

Rob Green, Pablo Barrera, Lars Jacobsen, Manuel Da Costa, Jonathan Spector, Winston Reid, Tal Ben-Haim and Victor Obinna will all go away with their respective countries, but one player who will not travel may well be eyeing a place on the bench at Molineux.

Thomas Hitzlsperger has stepped up his training following his thigh injury and will be hungry to make his long-awaited debut against Wolves.