West Ham United manager David Moyes believes his Hammers team are better set this season to maintain a consistent level of form.
The Hammers have earned plaudits for their displays in defeating Wolverhampton Wanderers and Leicester City, as well as taking a point each off both Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City in recent weeks.
Now, they head to Liverpool on Saturday evening hoping to extend their unbeaten Premier League run to a fifth game.
Moyes says he can see a growing belief among his squad, and he looks at what he achieved during a decade of success at Everton as to what can be built in east London.
"It’s where we had the best level of success, where we’ve got to European football," he said.
"My ambition is to start to take West Ham closer to that, but at the moment, after avoiding relegation [in the past few years], it’s very hard to look that far away.
"But I'm hoping in the future, that’s the direction we’ve got to look and got to go. We have to try to find a way of moving up the league, getting a stability,
"At the moment, we’ve only played five or six games this season, so we could easily still be in that situation later on.
"But I sense something different, I sense a different group of players, I sense a different feel around the club. Obviously, we’ve got to hope we don’t get many injuries and stuff like that, but, overall, we can improve on where we were last year."
We have to try to find a way of moving up the league, getting a stability. I sense a different feel around the club
David Moyes
Part of that success has come from the backing Moyes has felt from above and he says the trust between himself and the Board is strong.
“Well, first and foremost you want trust, you want them to be really supportive and to listen – and also sometimes you need a sounding board for people to speak with," he added.
"So you want owners who understand. We don’t want owners who get too high when you win or too low when you lose. You need people to be pretty neutral because it’s a really fine divide when you are the coach and always up and down.
"More importantly you need the backing and support. At the moment I have had really good backing and support from the people at the club.
"They are helping me. And they want me to help the club. Hopefully we can do that.”
Meanwhile, the boss will be without Michail Antonio due to injury at Anfield, but he hopes to have him back as quickly as possible after his fine start to the campaign.
"His link-up play has become much better. I think he's thinking more," he explained, "But what we don't want to change is his big strengths, his explosive speed and his power, because that's why he's been doing so well.
"He's improved in other aspects of his game. I think he's enjoying it now, being a number nine. He's enjoying a period in his career of getting more goals. When you score goals it gives you more attention, it highlights you more, and I think Mick is enjoying that as well and he deserves it because he's scoring goals for us."
