West Ham United boss Slaven Bilic has told his players they should be happy with their efforts in the first third of the Premier League season as they find themselves sixth.

Wins over Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City mark the high points for the Hammers, who have undermined their progress with defeats against newly-promoted Bournemouth and Watford.

However, with 12 games played they have 21 points, leaving them just three points and two places shy of the coveted Champions League places.

At the same stage under Sam Allardyce last season West Ham had played a game less and found themselves in fourth, albeit with three points fewer.

But speaking to the club's website, Bilic insists his players should be satisfied ahead of the international break.

He said: "The international break has definitely come at a good time. I said to the boys, ‘Now we have played a third of the season we have to be happy with the way we are playing. We may have a few more points, maybe a few less, but we are in a good position.’”

“We've placed high expectations on ourselves and we will keep that level of expectation high.

"This is the last international break for a long time; we face a difficult time with the winter coming.

“I told them to be proud so far and I expect them to come back hungry. We have a lot of games to do until the end of the season, we want to maintain this level but also improve, we now we can still improve.”

And the Croatian would doubtless have seen room for improvement after his side bounced back from a 2-0 loss at Watford a fortnight ago to draw 1-1 at home to Everton on Saturday.

Ahead thanks to a stunning strike from Manuel Lanzini after half an hour, Romelu Lukaku grabbed his now customary goal against the Hammers to secure a draw.

But the real concern was the injuries picked up by attackers Enner Valencia and Dimitri Payet in the second half.

“I don't want to talk about the latest news until we see the scan," said Bilic. "The latest can be very different to what the real news is so I would prefer to wait until we have the results of their scans.

“It doesn't look good. The first one on Dimitri was a bad challenge, the second one was on Enner's ankle although he did get the ball.

“It was a big blow for us to lose both of them because we had been planning to play both of them together at some stage in the game.

“But the two injuries stopped us a bit. We would have been more creative and more dangerous.

“We can only hope they are going to be okay for the Spurs game but the latest doesn't sound very good. I hope that is not the case.”