Noble: We need to ‘hold onto a lead’ better

West Ham United captain Mark Noble expressed his disgust Tuesday with his side not holding on to defeat Crystal Palace last weekend, urging his outlet to improve in that area ASAP.

In speaking to the team’s official website, Noble lamented the Hammers inability to finish off struggling Palace when it had the chance to on Saturday, allowing their London rivals to score an equalizer in the dying seconds of the contest from Wilfried Zaha to finish 2-2 at Selhurst Park.

“You can’t make mistakes like we made at Crystal Palace in the Premier League and expect to win matches,” Noble said. “So we really need to learn how to hold onto a lead because we’re really shooting ourselves in the foot.”

“People talk about ‘managing the game’ and a lot of it is common sense. We need to be able to see the time out by slowing the play down and, in a way, get the opposition and their fans feeling anxious. I don’t think we have done that well enough this season.”

With this weekend’s opponent Liverpool coming off their fourth Champions League fixture, and with the November international break right after, Noble is fully attuned to it being yet another massive game for West Ham.

“Liverpool at home is a big game – it always is. We’re at home, we’ll have the crowd behind us and we’ve got to roll our sleeves up, look forward to the game and do the basics right.”

You can follow our coverage of West Ham hosting Liverpool all week and on Saturday with the usual matchday and full time recaps.