West Ham United defender James Collins believes that the Hammers' recent drop in form is due to the absence of their injured attacking players.

The Hammers are currently without the talents of Dimitri Payet, Manuel Lanzini, Victor Moses, Diafra Sahko and Andy Carroll, and have failed to register a win in their last seven league games.

Central defender Collins has been busy in recent weeks and is hoping for a little bit of respite as the attackers begin to return from their injury layoffs.

"We're defending well but a bit too desperate at times," Collins told the club's official website.

"Last-ditch tackles and chucking yourself in front of things, it looks good, but we don't really want to be defending that hard.

"We'd rather be a bit more solid and a bit more organised. We certainly need to be scoring more goals. I don't want to make excuses, but our flair players, our goalscorers, we are missing them.

"It's one of them things. You get injuries. Before, we were flying. Dimi (Payet) was flying. (Manuel) Lanzini was flying. (Diafra) Sakho's out as well. So it has derailed us a bit.

"We've got a massive squad, full of international players that have come in and performed. So it's not doom and gloom by any stretch of the imagination.

"But we are picking points up, we're still confident and we've got a busy Christmas period with games we feel we can win."