Mark Noble hailed West Ham for playing “like a proper team” when they brought their winless run to an end away to Crystal Palace.
Manuel Lanzini scored the only goal at Selhurst Park as West Ham claimed their first Premier League win since August with the visitors spending the final 15 minutes defending their lead with just 10 men after Aaron Cresswell received two controversial yellow cards in the space of a minute.
West Ham rode their luck at times, with Christian Benteke missing a penalty moments before half-time, and had goalkeeper Adrian to thank for an impressive late save from Connor Wickham.
“I thought we were tremendous,” Noble said. “They’ve got big players like Connor Wickham and Christian Benteke up front, but I thought our defence did a magnificent job, they dealt with them incredibly, it’s a top, top win for us.
“I said in an interview the other day that everyone here really does care, and I think we showed that. We looked at how Palace play and everything goes through Benteke so we knew we had to deal with that threat. Cheik [Cheikhou Kouyate] is great in the air, then alongside Reidy [Winston Reid] and Angelo [Ogbonna], obviously Cress [Aaron Cresswell] back in the side, we played like a proper team.”
Having extricated themselves from the Premier League drop zone West Ham now face bottom of the table Sunderland on Saturday. David Moyes’ side are yet to win this season and lost 2-0 at fellow strugglers Stoke on Saturday.
However Noble expects Sunderland to prove formidable opponents at the London Stadium: “It’s going to be a tough game, they need the points too.
“By all accounts we’ve had a terrible start, but now we’re only a point behind Leicester who won the league last year.
“If we start to put a few wins together, we’ll start to climb the table and get to where we want to be.”
