Noble lauds Hammer’s quality attitude

Mark Noble has hailed Pablo Fornals’ character and professionalism in showing his quality on his return to action at Liverpool.

Speaking on West Ham TV the captain said: “He’s a good lad, Pablo, you know. Every player, if you’re a football player it’s your profession, you want to play football. He obviously hasn’t done that as much as he’d like to, but he got his chance and he come in and did well.

“I said to him that not many West Ham players have scored at Anfield and he was happy to get his goal, but the lads were gutted to come to a place like that and play like that and not get what we deserved, but it is what it is and we have got to win on Saturday.”

Pic via www.whufc.com

He added: “At times, you go to Anfield and you sit in and you don’t really enjoy it because you don’t get the ball so much, but I really enjoyed the game, really enjoyed being part of it, taking Liverpool all the way, and we deserved more.

“I’m really just gutted for the fans who travelled up because I just felt like we deserved a little bit more.

“I thought the boys were brilliant, losing Tomas just after half-time, then going 2-1 up, and obviously Lukasz has made a couple of mistakes, but it’s a team game and we should be there to dig him out after he’s done that, and he’s saved us many times over the years.

“I said to the boys as I walked in: ‘As much as it’s a sickening feeling as we felt like we deserved more, we’ve got to take a lot of positives from that’. We didn’t look like a team that was fighting a relegation battle.

“I just think we need to get back into training and take all the positives from that game and recover, because the games are going to come thick and fast now, and I’d say we need to win five of them.”

ClaretandHugh blogger Allen Cummings says: One of David Moyes’ easier decisions for the visit of Southampton on Saturday has surely got to be the inclusion of Pablo  as a straight replacement for the unlucky Tomas Soucek. With the Czech likely to be out for two to three weeks, Fornals must have earned himself a starting place for the up-coming game.  Soucek had enjoyed an impressive first forty five minutes at Anfield on Monday, and his departure two minutes into the second half could have been a fatal blow. But Pablo came on and was every bit as effective as the man he replaced. Plus of course he weighed in with a smartly taken goal. Fornals has been an almost anonymous figure in Moyes’ recent teams – which has been a huge mystery to most of us. Obviously the manager has his reasons, but it would seem impossible now to leave the young Spaniard out of the starting 11. There will no doubt be a very strong case for new signing Jarrod Bowen to start in a game we simply have to go out and win. But Fornals can’t be the one to give way. We will need good legs and plenty of energy at the heart of the team, and Fornals high-octane game fits the bill perfectly. Pablo Fornals just HAS to play in my opinion.