After the horror start to the season suffered by West Ham United, to go the last two games unbeaten deserves some credit. In the end, you don’t turn around a start like that overnight: ten goals conceded in just three games was a start which could well have ended up costing Slaven Bilic his job. Instead, two clean sheets in a row has kept the damage to the level it was at before the international break.

And so even if a 0-0 draw against West Brom is hardly the most inspiring of results, there certainly is some merit in it.

In fact, after three away games to start the season and a win at home in the fourth game, to be on the road again the very next week was surely an unwanted trip under the circumstances. And given that, a point and a clean sheet is quite a good result, despite the relative lack of excitement involved in a goalless game away at the Hawthorns, and almost exactly what the Hammers needed.

It doesn’t fit much into the fabled ‘West Ham Way’ style of football, of course. Andy Carroll up front and winning eight aerial duels up against a Tony Pulis defence certainly wasn’t a lot of fun for anyone concerned. But after such a terrible start, solidity was the order of the day.

Clean sheets breed confidence, no matter what style of football you play. With Jose Fonte, Winston Reid and James Collins all able to claim a successful day, and with Fonte and Reid having more touches of the ball than any other players on the pitch, that will give Bilic’s defence more confidence than any other event this season will have done.

It’s a performance which will give the Hammers a platform to build on. You would hope that the style of play will change when the results start to come, but for now two clean sheets on the spin will help.

And yet, there’s still a need for a seminal moment to announce the turnaround of the season. Last year, there was a similar moment which didn’t come until very late in the campaign. After almost a year of difficulties and teething problems settling into the club’s new ground, the London Stadium finally became home after a 1-0 victory over bitter rivals Tottenham. That was the moment the ground had been waiting for: a time when a good performance led to an emotional victory. And that in turn seemed to announce that the problems were over, and that the team could start to kick on to a new level, at least at home.

And now, after a terrible start to the season could well be subsiding, the next game is once again at home to Spurs. It offers not just a chance to build upon two positive results - or at least, positive under the circumstances - but a chance to announce once again that a turning point has arrived.

What shouldn’t escape the thoughts of West Ham fans is that this could still be a very good season indeed. Just because they’ve only managed to win one of the first five games doesn’t mean that the season is a write-off. Whatever goal Hammers fans privately held before the season started should still apply.

Depending on the identity of the winners of the two domestic cup competitions, the top seven clubs will get into Europe. If that’s the aim for the Hammers this season, there’s still hope. Currently, two of the top six are newly-promoted sides Newcastle and Huddersfield, whilst Burnley sit in seventh. That should provide West Ham with all the persuasion they need that their bad start to the season shouldn’t preclude them from climbing the table.

It’s not like the clubs they were targeting - the likes of Everton and Southampton who have finished above the Hammers in recent years - have started particularly well either. There’s still time to turn it around. In fact, after this weekend’s results, West Ham find themselves above Everton in the fledgling league table.

The pressure on the manager and owners after the first three games was gathering in intensity, and for good reason too after the debacle of deadline day. But now the Hammers find themselves only three points behind Arsenal. That puts things into context: poor starts may mean throwing away points, but they don’t mean you can’t recover.

Next week, though, will be the test of West Ham’s recovery. Before the Huddersfield game, when they sat bottom of the table, the prospect of facing Spurs on such form was a daunting one. Now, a good performance and points from the game wouldn’t just repeat the feat from last season, adding a new memory and a new emotional connection to their new ground, but it would also kickstart a season which looked nigh-on impossible to ignite just a few weeks ago.

The basis for such optimism certainly isn’t just a draw away to West Brom. That alone shouldn’t amount to very much at all. But two clean sheets in a row certainly should. It shows that the problems the Hammers have had this season are being addressed, and it’s fitting that this should happen against a Tony Pulis side: the West Brom manager is proof that you can create a decent side by whipping the defence into shape before anything else.

West Ham have a better attack than the Baggies do, and if they sorted out their defence - as they seem to be trying to do - they can then work on the other side of their game without the fear of leaking more goals.

There are finally grounds for optimism at the London Stadium, not because of how the team are playing, and not because they are now two games unbeaten against underwhelming opposition, but because there is finally a real platform to build upon and because there’s a genuinely exciting game to come next.

https://video.footballfancast.com/video-2015/PL25(12-13).mp4