West Ham star Mark Noble: Man City are scarily good but I back Marko Arnautovic to give them a fright

Fright night: Noble has backed Arnautovic to give City something to think about
West Ham United via Getty Images
Mark Noble23 November 2018

On Saturday, we’re at home to Manchester City, the best team in English football and the side who will, in my opinion, lift the Premier League title again next May.

As a player, though, you look forward to these games, the big ones — and no-one does so more than our talisman, Marko Arnautovic.

‘Arnie’ is back from international duty with Austria, he’s trained well this week and I know enough about him to be absolutely sure he’ll be relishing this challenge.

Not unusually, he’s been in the news over the past couple of weeks and as players, we’ve seen and read all the speculation about other clubs being interested in him in January.

Will he go? No — but that’s just a hunch on my part.

I suppose I’m a bit unusual in modern football in that I’m a fan of the club for which I play. That makes me view things a bit differently to the majority of players. I want the best players at the club.

I was born in the East End and I have an allegiance, a strong emotional attachment to West Ham. I made the decision to stay at this club all my career, to create a bit of history for myself.

The vast majority of other players in the Premier League these days don’t feel quite the same way.

When they’re linked with a multi- million pound move and the prospect of playing in the Champions League, you can see why they have to consider things seriously.

I know Marko loves this club, he loves the dressing room and the fans and he won’t be thinking about anything else on Saturday, other than getting among those City defenders.

I understand they’ve scored 15 goals in their last three games — and 13 in the last three games against us when we’ve played them at home.

I would ask the question, though, are City not almost expected to do that to teams, given their spending power and the players they have?

Realistically, to compete with clubs like City, they have to have an off-day and we have to be one hundred per cent. Fact. Yes, we’re confident, because of the way we are and the way we’ve trained, but it’s all well and good being bullish when it’s Manchester City we’re facing.

'Loves the club'
PA

We have to try to enjoy it, though. They’re the best in this country and among the best in Europe.

As a player, you know it will be tough, you won’t have a lot of the ball, they’re expected to win and is anyone going to give us a chance? No.

It’s a game of football, and we’re going to try our hardest to get something out of this one.

I do think that City will win the title again. I don’t want to write off Chelsea, because they’ve been fantastic, the way they keep the ball. But Maurizio Sarri has relied on quite a small core of players so far and he has the Christmas schedule to come, whereas City have the squad to cope with a lot of games.

Our manager obviously knows some of their players well, but does that give us any advantage tomorrow? No, to be honest, because they play a completely different way now from when Manuel was there.

The way they control the game now is frightening. I watched them against Manchester United and the way they kept the ball and penetrated their rivals was in a different world.

On a different tack, it’s great to see the club and the stadium owners have reached an agreement about extending the capacity to 60,000 on match days. It’s the second biggest in the Premier League after United and it’s phenomenal to be playing in front of crowds like that.

The atmosphere this season, especially against Chelsea and Tottenham, has been brilliant. You wouldn’t think it makes a difference but, believe me, it does! The fans want to see us play good football and they can see an improvement, which is encouraging.

Joe was a fantastic player and one of the good guys

Getty Images

I just want to say a few words about my mate Joe Cole, who has retired from playing.

When the club asked me to talk about Joe this week, I said that the biggest compliment I could pay him is that he is a better person than he was a footballer — and he was a fantastic footballer.

I see him quite a lot but he might not be that happy with me this week. We were supposed to go out for dinner but I had to cancel.

I remember playing an under-14s game at Chadwell Heath and the first team were training there. He walked over and was watching our game. I remember I did a bit of skill and I looked over at him. He was clapping — and I’ll never forget that.

He always says my wife Carly had posters of him up on her wall!

In your dreams.

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