David Moyes has declared there will be “zero tolerance” of bad behaviour under his new regime at West Ham.
The East London club lost nine of their last 12 matches under Manuel Pellegrini, plummeting to one place and one point outside the drop zone.
But player discipline has also been on the slide with Michail Antonio crashing his Lamborghini on Christmas Day and captain Mark Noble clashing with Angelo Ogbonna during the Boxing Day defeat at Crystal Palace .
Moyes laid down the law when he saved the Hammers from relegation in 2017-18 – and has promised the same crackdown this time around.
“I’ve come in today and it nearly feels like deja vu,” said the Glaswegian. “I’d have said that (discipline) was probably one of the biggest jobs I had when I came in last time.
“It was make sure that there was zero tolerance.
“There can only be certain limits with what you can do.
“But it looks like I am going back to that level and saying, ‘This is how it is going to be. You either get on board or you don’t because I haven’t got enough time and enough games. if one or two of you don’t like it then sorry let me know’.
“I actually thought I had got rid of some of the things and I think we’d sort of got to the bit where there was quite a lot of non-negotiables like, ‘You’re doing the work’.
“That was non negotiable. I feel as if I might need to go back to the start and say, ‘We’re back to here’. I would have liked to have come in with a new message.”
Moyes also worked to improve the fitness of his players after succeeding Slaven Bilic in November 2017, citing the upturn in performance of former Hammers striker Marko Arnautovic as a case in point.
“I couldn’t tell you that’s one of the issues this year butt I felt it was last year,” said Moyes.
“If you look at the improvement in Marko Arnautovic in that period it was nearly from zero out of 10 to 10 out of 10. It was so big.
“Anyone like that now? The truth is I’m only meeting them this morning.
"But what I have watched, I don’t think it would be wrong to say we want them all to jump up a couple of pegs.”
