Mark Noble gave an honest and frank assessment of Saturday’s closely-fought home defeat to Bournemouth and backed the squad to put things right at Liverpool on Saturday.
Defensive lapses cost the Hammers dear as even three home goals did not prove enough as the Cherries scored four to secure their first-ever win in the top flight. Noble is backing the individuals who slipped up to bounce back and emphasised the whole team must share the burden when the going gets tough.
“It was a great start against Arsenal and maybe there was a bit of complacency,” Noble said. “We have to buck our ideas up as it’s a long season.
“But we’ve got a good enough team and good enough players and the players that made mistakes on Saturday know that they did but they are top quality players and I’m sure they will learn from that and we all have to get better.
“Normally with individual errors you can bail each other out, but we didn’t do that and Bournemouth took the three points.”
Noble revealed that manager Slaven Bilic had some stern words for his side at half time before the Hammers pegged a two goal deficit back to 2-2, through a Noble penalty and a Cheik Kouyate strike. However, more generous defending helped contribute to the visitors restoring a two-goal lead before Modibo Maiga ensured a tense finale by pulling a third back for the hosts.
“We gave them three goals, handed them to them, and got punished for it. You simply cannot do that at this level, as I said after last week’s game against Leicester.
“At half time the manager wasn’t happy and I know he’ll speak to us all again on Monday about what happened.
“We got ourselves back in it at 2-2 and the crowd was with us and you think you’re going to go on but we make another mistake and they score again. Overall it was really sloppy but in all fairness to Bournemouth they played well and deserved to win.
“We didn’t underestimate them as we knew they were a good side. I watched them a lot last year but you can’t give goals away like that in this league and we got punished for that. There is no excuse for football like that.”