West Ham’s Mark Noble has described a 2-1 defeat in his final London derby as a player as “disappointing” ahead of his retirement.
Noble announced his decision in March 2021 to retire at the end of this current season and yesterday (1 May) saw the 34 year-old participate in his final London derby as a West Ham player, which ended in defeat as Arsenal won 2-1 through headers from Rob Holding and Gabriel despite Jarrod Bowen’s equaliser.
West Ham consequently continue to sit seventh in the Premier League as they now prepare to visit Eintracht Frankfurt in Thursday’s second leg of their Europa League semi-final, albeit with a 2-1 deficit from the first leg to overturn.
Noble though felt that to lose from two set pieces from corner kicks was “really disappointing” despite manager, David Moyes making five changes to the squad due to a mixture of suspensions, injuries and tactical resting ahead of the trip to Frankfurt.
The experienced midfielder though was pleased with the team’s movement on the ball despite failing to snatch at least a draw as he continued: “I thought at times we played really well with the ball but when you concede from two set plays it’s a bit soul destroying.”
Explaining what went wrong during both corners, Noble commented: “When you mark zonally you normally have your smaller players in front of your bigger players and it’s for the smaller players really to try and block their runs. It was a good header.
“To be fair to Holding, it was a great header and it’s just disappointing it with us because we’re normally good at that and today they got two set plays and won the game.”
Looking at the positives to take into their trip to Frankfurt, Noble added: “Apart from that, I thought the boys were great. Some of the play was really good and some of the passing. We didn’t really challenge [Aaron] Ramsdale, but there was a lot of good play out there today.”
This season though has seen West Ham often forced to play a Sunday-Thursday-Sunday routine but Noble felt that the routine is more “tough” during the closing stages of a season than at any other stage of the campaign as Arsenal also know from their history of European competitions.
West Ham are consequently set to qualify for the Europa Conference League at present via their league position, yet Noble has vowed that the club will try to qualify for Champions League by winning the Europa League if they are victorious in a “massive” clash in Frankfurt then win the Final in Seville.
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