West Ham forward Carlton Cole thinks his side can finish in the top half of the table after a run of just one defeat in six games catapulted them out of the relegation zone.

Cole’s 11 goals this season have helped his side in their fight against the drop, after the Hammers’ early season form looked like it would make them certainties to join the Championship next season, and the striker claims the turnaround is all down to team spirit.

“Some of the performances this season have been unacceptable,” Cole told talkSPORT. “But the players have got together, shown great team commitment and we’re brushing it under the carpet.

“We all know what we can do, we’re all professional players and we’ve been in the game for quite a while. Sometimes the manager doesn’t need to say anything, we know. We’ve come into the changing room and we’ve lost a game and we know what’s needed of us.”

Indeed Cole, 27, claims his side can take the recent results and push on to achieve a top-half finish.

“It’s now time to work hard, look to the positives and get ourselves out of the mess that we’re in,” he said. ”We’re still on the road to where we want to be, that was the top half of the table and hopefully we can still get there because it’s a funny old Premier League season. We can really push on with the form we’re in at the moment.”

Meanwhile, West Ham manager Avram Grant also praised the fighting spirit shown by his players.

”When we were bottom of the league, we were fighting and fighting. We always wanted to find a solution and the spirit was very good,” Grant said. ”Of course no one was happy when we lost. But from every bad situation we became stronger and stronger. That is the reason why we now have good momentum. You cannot push a button and be good. You need to do the right things even when things are going wrong.”

Grant believes it is the attitude of the squad during the bad times that galvanises a team.

”The real character comes when you are not in the good days,” he said. ”I know what I want from this team and I know what I want West Ham to be in the next few years.”

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Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish is looking forward to seeing more of record signing Andy Carroll after the £35million striker made his long-awaited debut in Sunday’s 3-1 win over arch-rivals Manchester United.

Carroll made his first appearance since December 28, when he was still a Newcastle player, after a thigh problem as a 74th-minute substitute. His first touch was a goalbound header straight at goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar, having risen above the United defence to meet Jamie Carragher’s free-kick.

But Dalglish has warned not to expect too much too soon from the England international, who had scored 11 Premier League goals prior to his injury.

“He is a good guy. He is not someone who thinks he is superior to anyone else, he just loves playing football and wants to be part and parcel of the club,” said Dalglish. “We have to temper his enthusiasm a bit. He is only a young lad, he is going to be big player for this club.”

Dirk Kuyt scored his first Liverpool hat-trick, and the first by a Reds player against United since Peter Beardsley in September 1990, to render Javier Hernandez’s late header irrelevant. Dalglish, however, accepts they still have some work to do before they can match United in challenging for the title.

Sunday’s win lifted the Reds back up to sixth, but they are 18 points behind their arch-rivals who lead the Premier League by three points from Arsenal.

“Manchester United are a benchmark for everyone, are they not still top?” Dalglish said. “There is no-one who would rather be in their own position than United’s. The closer you get to the top the more difficult it is to close the gap. Moving from 20th to sixth is not as big a problem as moving from two to one so the higher you go the more difficult the step up is. United are a great benchmark but our season is not finished.

“We got our reward for the victory in three points in the league, but we just want to keep going and get as many as we possibly can. The owners (Americans Fenway Sports Group) are determined to move the club forward within reason. Whatever that is going to be, they will do their best to provide it. But the players who played there did not do themselves any harm in terms of being part of the club going forward.”

The win provided some revenge for the two defeats sustained at Old Trafford earlier in the season in both the league and FA Cup. Dalglish’s first match in charge, taking over less than 24 hours after flying in from a holiday in the Persian Gulf following Roy Hodgson’s sacking, was in the cup game. However, he said it was difficult to compare the performance from then to Sunday.

“It was a totally different story. They got given a penalty after a minute and we had our captain sent off after 30,” he said. “It was really different to what this was but everybody was disciplined, well tuned in to what they had to do, wanted to do it and did it.”

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Cesc Fabregas insists Arsenal’s Champions League fixture against Barcelona on Tuesday does not hold any extra significance for him, despite his close association with the Catalan club.

The last-16, second-leg tie is the first opportunity Fabregas has had to return to his former club with Arsenal, as a broken leg prevented him from featuring at Camp Nou in the quarter-finals last season. Though he has struggled with a hamstring injury of late, Fabregas has declared himself fit for Tuesday’s tie.

The Arsenal captain is understandably the centre of the attention given the fact that the Barca academy graduate told Arsene Wenger he wanted to join his former side in the summer, only to see two offers rejected by the Gunners.

However, Fabregas says his approach to the fixture has not been affected by his history with the Spanish champions.

“I am not here to shut up comments or to beat anyone specifically,” Fabregas said. “I am just here to win for Arsenal Football Club. Sometimes I don’t understand these reactions or comments about people saying I want this or I feel this. I want to win for Arsenal and that’s it.

“I don’t put anything extra in my head because I play against Barcelona in the Nou Camp. It is a special game for everyone because it is a special stadium and we play against a good team. That’s it. It’s one more game that we want to win.

“I don’t like people talking about what I feel. Only I know what I feel. I want to do my best for Arsenal, and that is it. I just want to do well tomorrow, to keep improving myself and for the team. That is all.”

However, Fabregas, who left Barca to join Arsenal at the age of 16 in 2003, did concede that the thought of missing out on another game at Camp Nou had worried him after suffering his hamstring injury.

“Over the last few weeks I have suffered a bit because I was a bit upset because I did not know whether I was going to make it, but I have great feelings now,” he said. “Sometimes you cannot take a big gamble to come back quicker. I have a lot of experience in that so I prefer to be safe.”

Fabregas has identified Lionel Messi as the main threat to the 2-1 lead that Arsenal enjoy from the first leg. His former team-mate at La Masia scored four goals in the corresponding fixture last season as the Gunners exited the competition and is the reigning FIFA Ballon d’Or winner.

“Well, we know you can’t give Lionel Messi space, he scored four goals last season,” Fabregas said. “We showed what we had to do in the first leg, but we can’t forget we have to play our own game. We are Arsenal and we have to make ourselves be respected.

“I think there were key moments last season, like when they scored so soon after us. If they hadn’t they might have got nervous. Leo Messi made the difference last season. We have to be ready for everything.”

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