Three things Slaven Bilic must do this weekend to take 3 points from Southampton

After losing 4-0 to Manchester United at Old Trafford last Sunday, West Ham United will be desperate to bounce back at Southampton.

The Hammers travel down to the St Mary’s Stadium for a Saturday 3pm kick-off and will hope to open their account for the season in terms of goals scored and points.

Southampton started the season with a 0-0 draw against Swansea and will be hoping to cash in on a West Ham team that is low on confidence and missing three key players in Manuel Lanzini, Andy Carroll and Cheikhou Kouyate.

Michail Antonio is back, though, and available for selection.

West Ham need some confidence back and three points would be a great way to get the season kick-started.

Here are three things that Slaven Bilic simply must do to ensure that West Ham have the best possible chance of picking up three points at Southampton this weekend…

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Service to Hernandez

Javier Hernandez was incredibly isolated up front against Manchester United and did not get a sniff of a chance.

The Mexican international is a proven goal scorer and a superb finisher but he needs some service.

It is no good lumping long balls forward to the former Man United and Bayer Leverkusen man because he is not a big striker.

We need to be clever with our build up and change of our approach play to suit him.

Attackers

One of the big problems we had on Sunday was the lack of attackers to come on and change the game.

The bench was full of defenders aside from Diafra Sakho, who did not look fully fit yet.

Bilic has Antonio back now but he needs to bring in at least one of Nathan Holland, Sead Haksabanovic or Toni Martinez to add another attacking option from the bench in case we do go behind again.

Tighten up at the back

This one is the clearest of them all.

Our defence was shambolic and leaky last week but perhaps we can put that down to a bad day at the office or the sheer brilliance of Romelu Lukaku?

Against a lesser opposition in Southampton, a clean sheet would boost the Hammers’ confidence a lot.

Whether Bilic shores the defence up by changing personnel (Cresswell, Byram, Fonte or Collins could come in) or by changing formation is up to him.