David Moyes has insisted West Ham are trying to do things in the right way as they attempt to build the club into a force at home and in Europe.
The Hammers have been engulfed recently by the controversy surrounding defender Kurt Zouma and the mistreatment of his pet cat.
Zouma, who was fined two weeks’ wages, was selected to play against Watford in the immediate aftermath of the incident being made public, and would have started against Leicester last weekend had illness not ruled him out at the last minute.
Moyes has revealed skipper Mark Noble stepped in to ensure the dressing room remained united amid a public outcry.
He said: “To be fair, Mark Noble does a really good job. He brought the players together, they all spoke together about the situation, they had it out amongst themselves.
“He did the sort of thing which an experienced captain would do, which is great for the manager, so there are a lot of joined up things at the football club, a lot of people trying to pull in the right direction and do the right things.
“We might not always do the right things or get it right, but no matter what age we are… in my position, I have to try to keep learning. I had a new learning experience last week.
“My board of directors and the people at the club and the owners, maybe they’ll see maybe there’s another way to do things which gets good results, so I hope everybody at the club does that and the players on the pitch as well.”
Asked about Noble’s intervention, Moyes added: “Mark off his own back took responsibility and showed great leadership and decided, ‘I’m going to get this out in the open, I’m going to get this out of the way, we’re going to try to discuss it and see who’s happy and who’s not happy. Let’s flush it out’ because ultimately, we’ve got a lot of games and the players need to work together.”
The Hammers entertain Newcastle on Saturday with the Magpies hoping for much-improved fortunes under their new largely Saudi-backed owners, but they too have high hopes of establishing themselves as a genuine force.
They currently lie in fifth place in the Premier League table and have secured their passage to the last 16 in the Europa League, although Moyes is not content to rest there.
He said: “We’ve grown really quickly, really fast, if we’re being honest, in two years, so the next bit is to get another good layer of foundations in so that we can try to build for not just the next six months or the next year, but try to get another layer of foundations in which gives us a chance to be successful for the next two or three years going forward.”
