MARK NOBLE is eyeing up a Treble not even Manchester United can claim to have won.
For a campaign that started and continued in such woeful fashion, West Ham are on course for the unlikeliest of successful endings to a season.
David Moyes’ senior side is on course to lead the Hammers to Premier League survival following an upturn in form while also eyeing up a major European final.
Facing AZ Alkmaar in the Europa Conference League semi-finals next month, a first major title for 43 years is still on the cards ahead of a potential June 7 final in Prague.
And to top it all off, the club’s U18s could make history by beating Arsenal in the FA Youth Cup final at the Emirates tomorrow night.
West Ham’s academy have not reached this stage since 1999 when the likes of Joe Cole and Michael Carrick inspired a 9-0 victory over Coventry City – the same year United won their famed Treble under Sir Alex Ferguson and the Class of ‘92.
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And former academy product Noble – who spent 18 years at the club before becoming sporting director in January following his retirement last summer – said: “It gets remembered forever. That’s what things like this do.
“It would be incredible if we go on to win the Conference, if the boys with the Youth Cup and obviously the main aim is for the first team to stay in the Premier League.
“If all works out, we’ll be celebrating.”
Noble spends the majority of his time in his new role down at West Ham’s famed Chadwell Heath academy, donning some boots and getting stuck in with the younger age groups.
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He laughed: “They have to hold back on me actually”, before revealing he often beats the teenagers in skills games before sending them humorous trash-talking texts.
It is where he feels most comfortable, admitting he barely spends any time in his plush office at the senior’s training ground down the road at Rush Green.
It is fair to suggest he is unlike any sporting director across the whole of Europe.
Noble continued: “I still want to know what’s going on, how we can get better, how the academy can move on. That’s what you’ve got to do in the game now.
“Financially, we cannot compete with Manchester City, Chelsea and even Arsenal and Spurs with their facilities, but you know here that every door is open.
“This place is special. It always has been. I always say to the staff here: ‘How do we keep replicating that? How does it not get stale?’
“How do we keep having myself, the sporting director of West Ham United, who has played hundreds and hundreds of games for the club, training with our U14s, U16s, and U18s before their FA Youth Cup final?”
West Ham have so far failed to replicate the Golden Generation of players produced back in the late 90s. The likes of Carrick, Cole, Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Jermain Defoe and Glenn Johnson are now all considered top flight greats.
Since Johnson made his England debut in 2003, only Declan Rice has gone from the academy to representing the Three Lions senior side, while the last graduate to start a Prem game was defender Jeremy Ngakia – now at Watford – back in January 2020.
Yet Noble can sense a change in the air, suggesting there are around seven U18s good enough to eventually make their debuts in Moyes’ first team, especially if they add the FA Youth Cup to this year’s Premier League South title victory under coach Kevin Keen.
Noble added: “The academy is moving in such a great direction, the players we’re bringing through, the success of our teams.
“It’s a place now that kids want to come and play because for one, they see a pathway and for two, they see a real sort of cohesion and a team spirit that all the coaches here drive.”
Standing in the way of West Ham’s U18s doing the Double are Arsenal, led by former Gunners star Jack Wilshere.
Noble has fond memories of Wilshere, now 31, during his brief and injury-plagued two-year spell in east London, and explained: “We’ve got a great relationship, we speak regularly.
“We spoke a lot when he was thinking about retiring because he’d had enough of the injuries. He’s such a great fella. He rang for my advice and I gave it to him.
“I’m so pleased Arsenal have taken him in. When the U18s played Arsenal the other day at Rush Green, he came over before kick-off and I shook his hand.
“But I said: ‘Jack, look, I’m not going to say good luck because I don’t mean it’. He called me something, obviously. But it’s great, you love to see the boys you played with go on.
“You never know, one day he might become Arsenal’s manager.”
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Noble, 35, was reminded of his own Youth Cup days for West Ham last year when his mum got out a box of old cuttings and programmes.
He says he struggled to remember most of them, but added: “The boys will not forget this one. They’re a special group. I say to them all the time: ‘It’s over to you’.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
