West Ham United have endured a difficult start to the season, losing to both Manchester United and Southampton, which raises the pressure ahead of the Hammers’ trip to tackle Newcastle United this weekend.

Slaven Bilic’s side will face off against a Magpies outfit that has also found things difficult on their return to the Premier League, having also lost both their opening two matches this season, and boss Rafael Benitez has been very vocal about his demands for further January additions.

The Spaniard has made plenty of waves with his demands but Bilic, who himself remains active in the market, has stated he has no sympathy for his Newcastle counterpart- stating that this weekend’s opponents have spent more than the Hammers in the transfer market this season.

Quoted by The Daily Express ahead of this weekend’s crunch tie, the Croatian manager said:

“I think in this transfer window, I don’t know exactly, but I follow who they have bought and sold.  They are not happy with the transfers but they have spent more money than we have spent in this transfer window – if we are talking about net money.”

“Okay they maybe needed more to improve because they came from the Championship.  It is a big club, they were all buzzing. They won the league and now it was: ‘Now we are going to rule the world or whatever’. Maybe they tried. I think they tried.”

“What I think happened is they tried but maybe they were unable to get those targets that they wanted. Like we did last year for example. Maybe they were thinking too big and those players, they didn’t want to come. But I don’t feel that they are not an ambitious club.”

Newcastle may be stated as favourites for this weekend’s tie due to their home advantage, and the Hammers continue to have notable absentees following the red cad of Marko Arnautovic last weekend, but West Ham do have the talent to emerge victorious.