Clean sheets are key during injury crisis, insists Noble

  • by Staff Writer
  • Sunday, 20th December 2015

Club captain Mark Noble believes West Ham are keeping things ticking over nicely whilst the club attempts to cope with a lengthy injury list.

Dimitri Payet, Winston Reid, Diafra Sakho, Manuel Lanzini, Victor Moses and Andy Carroll - all six of whom could feasibly have started at the Liberty Stadium this afternoon - are all currently out injured as the club enters its busy Christmas schedule.

Yet despite those omissions West Ham managed to keep a third consecutive clean sheet to extend their unbeaten run to three games. And that, according to Noble is key whilst the team attempts to cope without so many key figures.

"We're keeping clean sheets and we're working hard for each other," he said after today's goalless draw. "Four or five players have come in who haven't played football for a long time as we've had a lot of injuries, but the squad are fully together and are working hard for each other.

"There's games we should have won. Goals change games so you can never tell, but clean sheets in this league are very important. We had chances, we've hit the post four or five times [in recent games] but it's just not going in for us at the moment.

"But the most important thing is that we;re getting players coming back from injury now - and we're digging in for each other, we're all working hard as a squad together and training well. We keep putting points on the board when we're probably being outplayed in games sometimes."

And whilst Noble admitted that West ham were outplayed at times today, he felt that the team were well worth a point. "They played very well in the first 25 minutes then we got into the game and has a few chances ourselves," he added.

"We expected them to come out and play well. I don't know why but it's always the case when a manager leaves and all of a sudden, the players work that little bit harder because they want to impress the new manager as they're all playing for places.

"So we knew it was going to be tough today and we're happy with the point."

Noble also dismissed claims by the hosts that they were hard done by after having a penalty appeal denied by referee Lee Mason, when James Collins appeared to handle the ball inside his own penalty area when attempting to prevent a shot from coming in.

"There was a ball that Ashley Williams blocked as well which was hand ball in the box, so it probably evens itself up in the end," he insisted.

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