Mark Noble has highlighted his longevity at West Ham as one of the proudest achievements of his football career. The Hammers captain is entering his final season with West Ham as a player, after making his first-team debut in 2004 during a League Cup match against Southend United. Since then, the 34-year-old has gone on to captain his boyhood club and rack up more than 500 appearances in the claret and blue – something he is understandably immensely proud of.
Mark Noble said: “One of my biggest achievements is probably the games I have accumulated for West Ham under nine or ten different managers because I think people get the view that if you are a homegrown player you play in the team and that is why I have played. But there are hundreds of homegrown players that have come through their teams and don’t quite make it to play for their team on a regular basis and have to leave to go elsewhere.”
Noble had two loan spells away from West Ham during his formative years, at Hull City and Ipswich Town, before establishing himself as a regular in the first team under Alan Curbishley during the 2007-08 season. Since then, Noble has been a fixture in the Hammers team, with last season the first in 14 where he made less than 25 league appearances as his West Ham career draws to a close. Noble’s longevity has seen the captain play under eight different permanent managers and the 35-year-old is proud of the adaptability he has shown to feature under each one of them.
Mark Noble said: “I have played under different styles and cultures of managers and been able to adapt my game and accumulate nearly 550 games so that is a very proud stat of mine. Obviously [playing] over 400 Premier League games for the club which is one of my proudest achievements.”
Noble is on the cusp of his final Hammers season and for the first time in his long career, the captain has European football to look forward to. Following the Hammers’ top-six Premier League finish last season, the new campaign comes with a spot in the Europa League group stage, something Noble has never experienced after falling at the qualification stages on two occasions. The captain cannot wait for the new campaign to get underway and described the opportunity to play in Europe as “really exciting.”
