West Ham United manager Slaven Bilic has insisted that his players gave their all in Sunday's defeat to Southampton, but conceded that his side are "simply not good enough" at the moment.
The Hammers fell to a 3-0 reverse at the London Stadium to make it five losses from their first six games this season in the Premier League.
Bilic has no complaints about the margin of defeat, with his side second best from the moment they fell behind to Charlie Austin's opener shortly before half time, but believes that things will slowly start to improve as long as his group of players do not give up hope.
"We deserved to be defeated. One by one [the players] gave everything but it's not enough," he told Sky Sports News. "It's hard to change it. The team is down. We have good weeks of training but when the game comes it's simply not good enough. We have to work hard but it's not happening.
"The first half was OK. We were solid until that goal. In the second half they were better than us. We had a couple of chances but missed the target and they were very dangerous on the counter-attack. We are in a really bad spell.
"We are a team that is expecting something to happen by default. We don't have the confidence and it's a chain reaction. It's not a magic wand thing. All you can do is stick together and work hard."
West Ham, who return to action next weekend with a trip to face Crystal Palace, find themselves in 18th place in the division after six rounds of matches.