Graeme Souness and Roy Keane blasts David Moyes after West Ham loss v Man United
Roy Keane and Graeme Souness slammed David Moyes for throwing Mark Noble onto the pitch in stoppage time to take a penalty for West Ham in their loss versus Manchester United.
Luke Shaw’s handball gave the Hammers a late chance to rescue a point before Moyes substituted on club captain Noble, whose spot-kick was easily saved by David De Gea.
West Ham lost the game 2-1 despite holding the lead in the first half and after the game, Keane wasn’t happy with Moyes’ late change.
“He’s taken penalties before, he’s an experienced player – I don’t care. There must be players on the pitch who are up to speed with the game. Rice, Cresswell, whoever is on the pitch, experienced players who would slot the ball away,” said Keane on Sky Sports Premier League after the game, as shown on Football Daily’s Twitter account.
Souness then said: “It’s a poor decision. It’s the 94th minute, he’s not been warmed up to come on as a sub so he’s stone cold.
“It’s one of two things. The manager has said, his decision, ‘on you go, I want you to take it’ or Noble’s into the manager saying, ‘get me on, boss, I’ll take it’.
“Either way, it’s the wrong decision.
“You wouldn’t do that. Stone cold. It doesn’t matter if he scores every penalty he takes in training and every penalty before today. You don’t bring someone who’s stone-cold who’s been sitting watching the game for 90 minutes to take a penalty in that situation.
“It’s wrong.”
Terrible
Moyes owes an explanation for that.
While Noble has been Mr Reliable over the years for West Ham, he’s still someone who barely plays nowadays and chucking on a player just to take a penalty is poor.
Moyes had players on the pitch who could have taken that.
We’re looking at Declan Rice, Aaron Cresswell, Andriy Yarmolenko and others. We’d have trusted someone already on the pitch to deliver rather than someone coming in from the cold at such a late stage.
Noble looked calm and composed as he came on but that’s only half of the job when it comes to taking a penalty.
He didn’t have a feel for the ball – he simply wasn’t ready.
In other West Ham news, Stan Collymore claims the Irons will want to sign this “unbelievable” player who could be on the move in January.
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