West Ham manager Sam Allardyce believes the wholesale changes he made to his side in their Capital One Cup defeat to Wigan last month has worked in their favour.
The Hammers were jeered off the pitch by a small section of their fans following the 4-1 home defeat to Wigan but travel to the DW Stadium to face the Latics on Saturday sitting seventh in the Barclays Premier League table. Allardyce has guided West Ham to four wins in their opening eight league games on their return to the top flight, with only defeats to Swansea and Arsenal blotting their copy book.
He said: "Like everything else you change your side accordingly, I think I made eight changes (nine changes) on the day and obviously that was too many and too many of the youngsters came in and didn't quite perform to the level I hoped."
Allardyce added: "We suffered a defeat we deserved to suffer - our ability to come back from that and not linger on that has been absolutely excellent.
"While our first priority lies with the Premier League. I'm sure everybody understands that where we are in the Premier League now is probably down to me changing the side around going into games against Crewe and then Wigan, sadly we lost but we have benefited in the Premier League from then on."
Allardyce's side won 4-1 at home to Southampton last weekend but he is still yet to see loan signing Andy Carroll hit the back of the net. With goals being shared throughout the team the former Newcastle boss is not concerned by the England international's goal drought but conceded Carroll himself might be.
Allardyce said: "I hope not, it doesn't play on my mind, I think it does play on a strikers' mind.
"It would be nice if he did (score) but I think the most important thing is to win games of football.
"Getting your strikers scoring goals is very important, we haven't needed them too much up until now because we have started really well.
"We are spreading them out well with a good diversity of goalscorers, Kevin (Nolan) is out on his own with four which is an outstanding start to the season for him, the rest have got one here and there."
Source: PA
