Hammers midfield star wants the defence to tighten up

Mark Noble has urged his team-mates to not become caught up in the hype of playing Liverpool at Anfield and treat it like any other game.

West Ham have not won at the Merseysider’s famous ground since 1963 and with the Hammers sitting at the bottom of the table after only picking up just one victory this season, a positive result is a must.

“You have to beat what’s in front of you. You know its 11 men v 11 men and we have to be positive and try to get some points,” Noble said.

“I am a positive person, but both the team and players know it isn’t good enough. We need to come together as a team we need to put points on the board if we can do that we will start climbing the table, gradually.

“Don’t think about it too much (playing at Anfield). Prepare the same as you do every game. You go there to try to take points. Liverpool have some fantastic players and a great manager and we need to go there and show exactly what we can do.”

West Ham have done just that when the pressure has been off this season, with their only victory coming against Tottenham, while they performed well at Arsenal, Stoke and Brimingham. However, with Fernando Torres slowly playing his way back into form, the east Londoner’s recent dodgy defence must make a vast improvement on their recent showings.

“We are letting sloppy goals and in the Premier League you get punished, that’s what’s been happening,” he said.

“If you watch our games this season we’ve played unbelievably well in some of them, we have been scoring but letting them in as well. It’s not good enough. We need to score goals and keep clean sheets and we haven’t been.”

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