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Hello everyone.
Unfortunately, I’ve been playing with an injury that means I won’t be available to play in Saturday’s Premier League fixture with Leicester City, but I’ll be supporting the lads and I hope we’re all going to be celebrating an important win come five o’clock.
I want to clarify some comments I made in an interview I gave at the start of the week, as I feel they didn’t come across as I wanted them to.
I was asked about the criticism that has been levelled at me and the team this season, and I just want to make it clear that I wasn’t digging out West Ham United fans in general, because I can assure you if I wasn’t playing I’d be sitting with them.
I was born a West Ham supporter, I bought tickets when I was a kid, I started in the Academy when I was eleven, I went to all the home games, I was lucky enough to get into the first team and then live my dream by captaining my Club.
As captain and a lifelong fan, I am the first to admit that we have not reached the same standards that we did so often last season.
There have been reasons for that, but we need to start looking forward positively to the future, rather than dwell on the issues which have made things more difficult for us.
When it comes to the criticism, I want to say we have an incredible fan base, at matches home and away, week-in, week-out – proper people who love their Club – but there is a small minority who just want to criticise the players and the manager out at the first opportunity.
We are going to lose games. Players will have bad games. That’s for sure. But that doesn’t mean we are not giving 100 per cent for the Club.
As much as we try to ignore the comments made on social media, sometimes they are unavoidable and while I’m not fussed about whether I get stick or not, some players are affected by it.
I think back to exactly ten years ago, when we were bottom of the Premier League.
If social media existed then like it does today, people would have been calling for Alan Curbishley to be sacked or for all the players to be dropped, including Carlos Tevez!
Then what happened? Everything clicked and we won seven out of our last nine games to stay up!
Times are different now. Instead of walking out of the ground and having a moan to your mate or your Dad, some people leap straight on social media and troll the player directly.
You have a right to moan, of course, but negativity spreads and it can affect everyone, especially younger players who have not developed a thick skin like us more experienced ones.
What I am saying is that we need to be positive, inside the dressing room, in the stands and on social media.
I play under a manager who gives 100 per cent every day, and when the players are not doing likewise, I’ll be the first person in the dressing room to go around and tell them to pull their socks up.
We’ve always been a Club which values commitment and hard work – players like Billy Bonds, Julian Dicks and Scott Parker, who gave 100 per cent every day.
One player who certainly did that was Dylan Tombides, who we are paying tribute to on Saturday with a DT38 Foundation Awareness Day.
We miss Dyl around the place every day, and his legacy lives on in the shape of this fantastic charity. Please give whatever you can to the cause.
Come on you Irons!
Mark Noble
Captain
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West Ham captain Mark Noble admits the last eight months have been the most difficult of his career, but has hit back at fans calling for him to be dropped.
In recent weeks, Hammers manager Slaven Bilic has defended Noble's place in his team, with a certain section of the club's support suggesting the 29-year-old should be left out.
Noble, who joined West Ham at the age of 11, is closing in on 400 appearances for his boyhood club and has insisted he can handle the pressure laid at his door.
"If I am really honest, a lot of people who now go to football don't really understand the game," Noble told Sky Sports News HQ.
"Football is a game of moments now and if someone does four step-overs, they've had an incredible game.
"That's not something I do. It's just football, you've got to live with it. The things Arsene Wenger has done for Arsenal and some people want him out.
"Players like Wayne Rooney, some people want him out of Manchester United team. That's why we are captains of our clubs, because we can handle that pressure."
West Ham have endured a difficult first season at London Stadium with a number off-the-field issues affecting the club and the playing squad.
The sale of star midfielder Dimitri Payet in particular proved to be a huge disruption for the first-team squad, with the French international stating he would never play for the club again before eventually sealing a move back to Marseille in January.
"It's probably been the hardest [period] of my West Ham career because we've had so much to deal with off the pitch," Noble said.
"Obviously the move to the new stadium, the Dimi situation, so much has gone one and we lost four of our best players to injury in pre-season, which is hard to replace.
"You've got to stick at it, the players have dug in and though we've lost a couple of games, in this day and age you're not allowed to lose games."
C&H
Noble gets it in neck from Irons legend
Exclusive
Mark Noble has received a stiff rap across the knuckles for his comments about “some fans not understanding the game” from Hammers ‘elder statesman Phil Parkes.
The man considered the best Hammers goalkeeper ever has always been a huge favourite with the Irons faithful and doesn’t believe they deserved to be spoken of in such a way.
And he told ClaretandHugh exclusively: “First and foremost you just can’t talk about fans like that. You just don’t do it. It’s not on. For the skipper. or any other player for that matter, to be addressing his fans like that isn’t right at all.
“To say fans don’t understand the game is just not right – fans live and breath the game and understand enough to know when a player isn’t performing and that’s what this was about. Fans do understand football believe me!”
Parkes believes that Noble’s time at the club is now up and said: “I’m afraid the simple truth is he’s not good enough anymore. He never had a lot of pace but it seems this season that what he had has gone.
“It comes to everybody and he has been a magnificent servant but it’s clear to me that Cheik Kouyate is the man for midfield and Sam Byram needs to be given a run at right back.
“I was saying this at the beginning of the season and nothing I have seen this season has changed my mind.”
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