Battle scars worry George McCartney

George McCartney admits it will be hard to overcome the mental scars of last night’s defeat before West Ham face Cardiff in Saturday’s crunch game.

The 6-0 rout at Manchester City damaged confidence even further after the 5-0 hammering at Nottingham Forest on Sunday.

West Ham are desperate to pick themselves up before the clash in the Welsh capital but they have not won in the Premier League since the end of the November and are 19th in the table, three points behind fellow strugglers Cardiff.

McCartney said: “We’re going through a difficult time at the minute and trying to come through the other end. The Premier League is very important and we’ve got a massive game on Saturday. It’s not going to be easy [to forget about this] as defeats like that are hard to take. We need to move on to the Cardiff game and we need three points.”

Injuries to James Tomkins, James Collins and Winston Reid meant McCartney was forced to fill in at centre-half against a side who have been rampant at the Etihad this season.

He added: “I think there wasn’t much in it for the first 10 minutes but once they got the first goal it sent them on their way and we found it difficult to get close to them really. City pass it really well, the forward players have really good movement and we just weren’t able to deal with it.”