Sam Allardyce backs West Ham to return to winning ways against Southampton

West Ham boss Sam Allardyce believes his side will benefit from an easier start to the season when they meet Southampton this weekend

The Hammers boss admits that they key to success will likely lay with him finding the right balance between attack and defence. He said: "There's two ways of playing the game. You play the game when you're in possession and you play the game when out of it. If you don't get both right, you don't win. "Certainly your first year in the Premier League, what you do out of possession is just as important as what you do in. You've got to get those two critical points on an equal par if you can. "If you can do that, particularly defensively, even though Southampton haven't found it that difficult, they've scored 12 goals in seven games, but they've gone out to score those 12 goals and left gaps that have been exploited. "We suffered the same problem against Arsenal two weeks ago, because when we got better in possession in the game, in the second half particularly, they hit us on the break and smashed us a couple of times and they ended up winning 3-1. "Whereas in the balance as it was looking with only 10 minutes to go at 1-1, we might have got something out of it then all of a sudden..."