Mark Noble has called for calm following the club’s disappointing start to the 16/17 season.
After the success of last season, many of us have been scratching our heads at what has been an unexpected beginning to this term.
After our Europa League elimination at the hands of Astra Giurgu for the second successive season, we’ve only managed to scrape one win from our opening four Premier League games, losing the other three.
Having lost away to both Chelsea and Manchester City, it was still believed that we would have enough to pick up points against the so-called lesser sides. But Saturday’s capitulation at the hands of Watford, having raced into a 2-0 goal lead at the London Stadium, has now got alarm bells ringing.
But skipper Mark Noble insists the players are remaining positive and he has called for calm ahead of next weekend’s trip to West Brom.
He told the club’s official site: “That is the best we have played for a long while, in the first half. A couple of mistakes have cost us and we couldn’t recover.
“If we can go in 2-0 up at half-time it is a different game, but the mistakes have cost us in the end.
“There is a long way to go and we have to stay positive.
“We got punished and have to learn our lessons. We have still got new players coming in learning the league and we have a lot of players in their second season.
“We have got players coming back from injury like Manu and Dimi. We have got to take the positives and played fantastic in the first half, but we conceded silly goals.”
We have a relatively favourable run of fixtures on paper coming up, but the defeat to Watford highlights the fact we cannot simply assume we’re going to pick up points from the likes of West Brom, Southampton, Middlesbrough, Crystal Palace and Sunderland.
Expectations were high going into this season, but so far we’ve been left hugely disappointed after picking up just three points from a possible 12 so far.
Hopefully, we can get our season back on track when we visit Tony Pulis’ West Brom on Saturday.
