Alan Shearer & Dion Dublin blast Mark Noble decision for West Ham v Manchester United
Alan Shearer and Dion Dublin have blasted the decision to hand Mark Noble the penalty for West Ham United against Manchester United.
David Moyes brought the veteran on the take the penalty with the final kick of the game, one he missed and saw the score finish 1-2.
Dublin insisted that it shows distrust in Declan Rice who was originally going to step up, with Shearer claiming he simply had to warm up.
Speaking live on Match of the Day 2 live last night, Dublin started the analysis with a word on Rice, who initially had the ball.
“One of the worrying things is, what does that say about Declan Rice?” he said.
“For me, it says he doesn’t trust him to take a penalty, there’s a little bit of distrust there. You’ve got a great penalty taker there, sat there on the bench not had a kick of the ball, you’ve got a player who’s played the whole game.
Shearer agreed, admitting that not only Noble, but any player in the world would have needed to warm up before taking such a pressure kick.
“Penalties are hard enough anyway, even in a pressurised situation, the last kick of the game – you need to warm up. It’s a difficult situation.”
Hindsight.
Looking back now, the decision to bring on Noble looks like an absolute disaster from Moyes and his staff.
It is easy to see that with the penalty being saved, but if it had gone in, everyone will have been labelling the boss as a genius.
After such a hard-fought clash, the game couldn’t have ended worst for the Irons with Jesse Lingard inevitably scoring the winner too.
Noble will be gutted to have let his side down, no-one is more West Ham than him and he will be back to make a positive impact between now and the end of the season.
It is time to move on quickly, with cup games and domestic action right around the corner, the only way to put this behind us is turning up and winning games convincingly.
In other West Ham United news, the Irons want to sign ‘Sensational’ attacker amid major contract drama – report
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