West Ham captain Mark Noble concerned by injury crisis
Sunday 27 December 2015 14:44, UK
West Ham skipper Mark Noble believes their injury crisis would affect any team in the Premier League.
The Hammers host Southampton on Monday after Boxing Day's 1-1 draw at Aston Villa and Noble believes their missing men would have made the difference.
James Tomkins (head) and Aaron Cresswell (hamstring) were forced off at Villa Park, but the club hope they will be fit to face the Saints with Dimitri Payet, Victor Moses, Manuel Lanzini, Andy Carroll and Nikica Jelavic already struggling with injury.
"I'm the first one to say we have a good squad but we miss the players we've got." Noble said. "We miss the players who create stuff and score goals. Take away Jelavic, Carroll, Dimitri, Lanzini and Moses, it's going to hurt any squad.
"We have managed to cope with it and I'm proud of the players for digging in and picking up the points.
"These teams are playing their full squads and we're asking six or seven players to play when they are not fit. We lost Tomks at half-time and Cress with 20 minutes to go.
"It's only 48 hours (between games) and we'll do a warm down (on Sunday) and start looking forward to Southampton. We need to get three points.
"We have come through a tough spell with a lot of games with a squad which is depleted but the boys have dug in well and I'm proud of them."
Saturday's point means Slaven Bilic's side have drawn their last five games and have not won in eight matches to sit 10th in the table.
Cresswell's strike against Villa - West Ham's first goal for 388 minutes - was cancelled out by Jordan Ayew's second half penalty after Rudy Gestede went down under Angelo Ogbonna's challenge but Noble felt the Villa forward fouled Ogbonna in the build-up.
"I thought it was a foul leading up to the penalty. It's just the way it's going for us," Noble told the club's official website.
"We scored a good goal with Cress and you hope you can hang on. We knew they were going to be tough. We wanted to come and get the three points and we were heading that way until a bad decision."
