Captain Jarrod Bowen believes that there is one small mercy available to West Ham United following Saturday’s calamitous defeat at Blackburn Rovers.

And it’s the fact that their 16th Championship game of 2026/27 is not scheduled to take place until November 21st.

Some extra time on the training pitch – albeit Edvin Austbo, Manor Solomon, Dinos Mavropanos, Tomas Soucek, Divine Mukasa, Joel Piroe and Mohamadou Kante have all received international call-ups – should in theory give Parker time to drill his ideas into the squad.

“It’ll be really important international break,” Bowen told the official website after a defeat which ensures that ninth-place West Ham will spend the November break outside the play-offs. Quite an achievement, given that those from third to eighth now qualify for an extended six-team tournament.

“It’ll be important for the manager to get his points of view across. It’ll be important to build that culture, that environment that we’re trying to create here.

“Like I said, we’ll have some really, really good training days. We will look forward to the next game against Preston. We’ll have a good fortnight of training underneath us and that’s only going to help us, only going to improve us. We have to come in and be ready to work now.”

A view shared by many of Hammers News’ TalkingPoints users. Even if a solution continues to evade Parker in the medium-term, a weekend spent without the sorry sight of more calamitous defending can only be good for our collective mental health.

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dantowen81951

Never been so relieved to see an international break

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suede116

@dantowen81951 I fully agree with you. What we need right now is time to get back on the training pitch and rebuild our confidence.

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chillout

There are clearly some players who just aren’t up for it – Parker needs to smash some heads together.

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