FORGET SEXY FOOTBALL, GET.. BACK TO BASICS

Bilic happy to return home as he tells struggling Hammers to master the simple things in a late bid to kickstart season

SLAVEN BILIC wants his troubled West Ham side to get “back to basics” on their return to the London Stadium tonight.

The Hammers boss, who turns 49 today, needs the birthday present of a first win this season against unbeaten Huddersfield to buy himself more time in the East End.

His outspoken press conference on Friday – when he contradicted and mocked the club’s co-owners – only increased the pressure on his team to clamber off the foot of the Premier League.

West Ham played and lost their first three games away from home because of the World Athletics Championships before a farcical end to the transfer window.

Now it is the players’ turn to take centre stage and prove they still want the Croat at the club – even if it is not the West Ham way.

Bilic said: “It’s good to play at home again, the home form is the key.

“The players know we have to begin physically, to go back to basics, dig in. Go back to those things like being together. Character, chin up, close them down. It is about that and through that the quality will come.

“That’s what they know, 100 per cent, and that is the most important thing – much more important than the other things.

“If you remember in the first season, we had big games for different reasons.

“The whole of last season was like that, so I’m used to it. We’ve been there before and we showed that we can cope with it.

“We showed in difficult moments we have the quality and the character – as individuals and as a team – to get out of that situation.

“It means we can do it again this season.”

The Huddersfield game is the first of three home games out of four in September which will rebalance the fixture schedule. They need big performances from their big-hitters Cheikhou Kouyate

(right), Javier Hernandez (right, centre), Andy

Carroll and Joe

Hart (right, below).

“We are looking to win at least two of them,” said Bilic.

Manuel Lanzini is out injured but Diafra Sakho is back in the squad after his aborted move to Rennes. “Diafra wanted to go,” Bilic said. “Also, that issue is not quite black and white. Did he have permission, permission on paper or just a form or an SMS? I don’t know. “Hopefully he is going to stay for a long time.

“But until January he is a West Ham player. If he plays well, he’s going to get a new contract and play again for Senegal or get a move.”