Mark Noble: West Ham skipper bucks the modern trend and vows to spend the rest of his career with boyhood club
East End academy graduate is the only Cockney left in a cosmopolitan Hammers squad
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TAKE a good look at Mark Noble next time you watch West Ham.
Captain, leader, legend at his local team. A survivor of six managers, the club’s longest-serving player — the epitome of a one-club man.
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All of which makes him part of a dying breed with the revolving-door policy of modern football.
Former Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard’s retirement from football brought that into sharp focus barely a week ago and the pace of today’s game, on and off the pitch, is Noble’s biggest challenge.
Deeply connected to the Hammers as an East Ender, he is keen to give something back to the area — one of the poorest in Europe but rich in football culture.
Noble, 29, also instinctively hates change but knows he must to survive and thrive.
He joked: “I am the only Cockney left here. We have more French speaking players than English. I can probably count to five in French but that’s it.
“I didn’t even take French at school. There is a good relationship here between the English boys and the foreign lads. I try to teach them a bit of Cockney but it’s a lost cause.
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“I have always thought that football is a language in itself anyway, whether players are from France, Russia or China you can communicate through the game.
“Just as Gerrard was brought up in Liverpool, I was brought up in East London and played for my local team. I have the record for the most Premier League appearances, captained the club, I was the last captain at Upton Park and the first captain at the Olympic Stadium.
“For me and my family, it’s incredible. For foreign players, they are used to moving.
“They try somewhere and if it doesn’t work out, they move on. It’s a big asset for them.
IT'LL BE OK
MARK NOBLE has called on West Ham fans to play the long game — and promised that everything will work out fine this season.
The club’s results have suffered since they moved to the London Stadium and switched training ground.
But Hammers skipper Noble, 29, said: “We have had lots of change to deal with but I know we’ll be OK. I’ve been playing in the Premier League since I was 17 and have been in dressing rooms where I didn’t get that feeling.
“But we have the squad to be all right and move on to next season more settled.”
Slaven Bilic’s team have struggled to repeat last season’s good form and are sitting fifth from bottom of the Premier League.
And former England Under-21 midfielder Noble, who leads the Hammers out against Arsenal tonight, added: “I knew this season would be hard. I spoke to the manager about it in the summer.
“We have a new stadium and for a club that was so stuck in its ways, West Ham have taken on a lot of change.
“Normally I don’t like change — I had the same seat at the old training ground where I ate my breakfast every day.
“But, in the long run, I know it makes sense because of the revenues and wages paid these days.”
“For people like me born and bred round here, it’s a massive decision to move. It saddens me to say this but I don’t think we’ll see more players like Gerrard or Paul Scholes, not so much me. I am really happy with what I’ve done. But young players aren’t getting the chance to come through and play like I did because there’s so much pressure. I just don’t think it’ll happen any more.
“The game now has moved on so much from when I started and even more from when Gerrard and Scholes did.
“It’s now pure athletes as well as footballers. Look at everyone, most of them can do the 100 metres in ten or 11 seconds — I do it in about 18.
“Young, technical players that don’t yet have the physical attributes get overlooked because they are not as powerful as the rest.
“And managers? They have five or six games in a job now before they’re either doing really well or they’re going to be sacked.”
West Ham’s struggles at the wrong end of the Premier League table are undeniably linked to the struggle adapting to football’s transformation.
They are sat fifth from bottom and host Arsenal this evening — with the four points taken off the Gunners last season seeming a long, long time ago.
One area that midfielder Noble is keen to see develop is the provision of decent housing for the working-class people who still take up most of the seats at football grounds, even in this gentrified age.
He has joined ex-Hammers Rio Ferdinand and Bobby Zamora in launching the Legacy Foundation — a regeneration project to build more affordable homes.
It is a surprising venture into an area not normally populated by footballers.
PAY CUT FOR OLD GEEZER
DIMITRI PAYET thinks Mark Noble is West Ham’s ‘old geezer’.
Skipper Noble says his French team-mate constantly winds him up about his age — even though he is only 40 days older!
Noble, 29, said: “If there is a picture of an old bloke in the programme, Dimi cuts it out and writes on it, ‘Mark, is this your son — or is this your brother?’
“He takes the mickey out of me for being old but I don’t think there’s much in it.
“Dimi has even told me he is 28, so he is lying to me already!”
Payet, who joined the Hammers for £10.7million from Marseille last summer, made his Premier League bow against tonight’s opponents Arsenal in a shock 2-0 away win last season.
Noble added: “Dimi didn’t just announce himself to the fans at Arsenal last year, but to us too.
“You don’t really get an idea of what someone is about in pre-season.
“But with everything he has done since, with his spectacular goals and assists, he has the right to be big-headed — but he just isn’t.”
But Noble explained: “We all grew up in social housing. Me and Bobby in Newham, Rio in South London.
“We’re adamant that 45-50 per cent of the houses are affordable and with that goes a subsidised creche — so people can work — sports facilities and schools.
“It’s not just in London, there is one in central Bedfordshire that is a long way down the road. I know it’s unusual but we want to give something back.
“Footballers do a lot of good work on the quiet then one person does something bad and we are all labelled wrong ’uns.”
But for this evening midfielder Noble, who sat out the midweek EFL Cup defeat at Manchester United, is focused simply on getting three points to move the Hammers away from the foot of the table.
He added: “I don’t think the West Ham fans see playing Arsenal in the same way as a Chelsea or a Tottenham.
“It’s not as ‘spiky’ but it’s still a big, big London derby for us and one that we look forward to.”
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