West Ham boss Sam Allardyce fears a stop-start Premier League programme could see the Hammers back down with the relegation strugglers. West Ham are six points clear of 18th-placed Cardiff, and Allardyce said: "There's not a huge amount of difference between 10th and the bottom three so that can change very, very quickly.
"Falling games behind is not what you want to do. To make those games up and points up, where others have played games if they've picked the points up is a difficult task.
"I think we're going to fall another game behind in a few weeks time when we were scheduled to play Arsenal who are now in the semi-finals of the cup.
"It's going to be a pretty tricky schedule to manage, so we have two weeks off and then we're going to have to play three games in a week when the opposition won't have had to do that.
"That becomes a difficulty then with the physical capabilities of the players. It's a pretty difficult situation to manage, more difficult than we would like, but we have to think carefully about how to manage it."
