We Won't Give Up

There is not much meat on the bone but for posterity I offer the latest entry in Dean Ashton's online diary. It is mainly a reflection on Sunday's defeat but he does add that a move away from the club is the last thing on his mind- at the moment at least!

We won't give up
By Dean Ashton

I was at our game against Spurs on Sunday and the manner in which we lost obviously wasn’t nice. But the players gave it their all and you can't ask for much more than that. There are definitely positives to take out of the defeat - the effort levels were maximum, and you can't knock the players because they gave it everything. At the end you could see how much it meant to them, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

Carlos Tevez scored his first goal for the club, which could open the floodgates for him. He has been coming so close over the past few months - he's always going for goal but he's just been unlucky. So it’s nice that he scored at the weekend but I'm sure he would have liked it to be with a win. You could see how much the goal meant to him when he went to celebrate with the fans - like any striker you want to score goals and I'm sure he's delighted with it. Hopefully there will be a few more between now and the end of the season.

The team must have gone through every emotion in the book but I think the most important things to remember are all the positives. There is no point dwelling on defeat - it was always going to be one of those difficult, tough games and it just wasn’t our day. You have to look forward to the next game, where hopefully a good result will come. Until mathematically it is impossible, there is always a chance that West Ham can get themselves out of trouble. The team just needs to make sure they go into the next game believing that it's the one to kick-start their survival.

To keep your confidence up I guess you have to believe in yourself, you can't believe that you've become a bad player overnight. It takes a lot of working hard to stay positive, you can't do much more than that. When a team isn’t doing too well players often get linked with moves to other clubs, although I haven’t even read anything about myself in the papers to be perfectly honest. That’s so far away from my thoughts right now anyway.

Keep checking back and I'll keep you up to date on how things are going. Bye for now!

E-mail answers:

Danielle – who was your football hero when you were growing up?

Hi Danielle. For years after the Italia 90 World Cup Gary Lineker was my hero, he was a pure out-and-out goalscorer who poached goals and just one of those characters who everyone loved; he was such a clean player too. Then it was Alan Shearer because he epitomised hard work, aggression, power and goalscoring ability.

I broke my ankle when I was playing football too, what's the best way to stay positive when you are on crutches? Andrew

Well Andrew, it can be hard but the best way is to find some good TV programmes! Friends was always a winner for me. And just think that it could be worse. There is always someone worse off than yourself, so you just have to be glad that you're healthy and you know you'll get through it.

Can you play any other sports and, if so, are you any good? Ben.

I can play pretty much any sport but whether I'm any good remains to be seen! You'd have to ask the people I was playing with/against. I really like golf; I'm OK at that.

Taken from the Icons.com website