By CandH’s top blogger Allen Cummings
The tones from the referee’s whistle had barely died on the wind before some keyboards were clicking deciding why we’d finished Sunday’s pulsating game against Manchester United with nothing to show for the effort put in by the West Ham players.
The accusations of course centred around that last minute penalty. If Martin Atkinson had had his way there would have been no penalty drama at all. He saw nothing wrong in the raised arm of Luke Shaw as he batted away Andriy Yarmolenko’s cross into the box.
Neither did the Referee’s Assistant, it has to be said, who was in the perfect position just a few metres away from the incident. But VAR spotted it – and a decision was forced on the man in the middle. I think it’s fair to say there were other ‘dubious’ penalty calls for both sides which may have influenced the game in other ways.
But who should take that particular spot kick? Manuel Lanzini, picked up the ball, Jarrod Bowen had it for a spell before it ended up with Declan Rice. Remember when Declan passed a kick on to Jesse Lingard last season, and he ultimately missed?
Rice himself has the unenviable record of missing the quickest ever penalty to be awarded in the Premier League, when we played West Bromwich Albion at the Hawthorne’s last season. In the event it wasn’t a decision Declan had to make .
It was made for him by David Moyes – who sent on Mark Noble to do what he’s done with distinction for so many seasons.
Nobes’ 84% conversion rate – 27 successes from 32 attempts puts him in the very highest echelon of penalty takers. In 2020 in fact he was second only to Robert Lewandowski in the world, with a 91.5% conversion rate – Lewandowski had 91.1%.
Why wouldn’t Moyes put his faith in his club skipper? American Football use specialist kickers all the time, and as Robbie Savage said on 5-Live, you don’t need to warm-up to take one kick.
It’s no distance to run before you hit the ball. Of course hindsight tells us it was a decision that didn’t work out the way we had all hoped. But how do we know for sure if anyone else had taken the kick, under such pressure, the result would have been any different? The short answer is we don’t. It’s pure guesswork.
Apparently David de Gea hadn’t saved a spot kick in the Premier League since October 2014 – despite having 21 opportunities to do so. Wasn’t it just bad luck for us that yesterday he guessed correctly for the first time in seven years?
We play United again in a few days’ time, when Mark Noble is likely to play more than just another cameo role. If we should be awarded a penalty at Old Trafford (highly unlikely of course) I for one will be happy for Nobes to step up to the spot again!