West Ham captain Mark Noble was happy to see an improved defensive display against Norwich City. The Hammers kept their first clean sheet of the season despite the Canaries having scored six in their first three games of the campaign.

Speaking after the 2-0 win on Saturday, Noble said that he was worried about how open they were in the wins against Newport and Watford, in particular, and he was glad to see an improvement at the back:

“The last two games we’ve played extremely well, especially going forward, but I said to the players in the week that we were really good in attack at Watford but we left ourselves open at times.”

“I didn’t like that, but today we were solid. We really limited them to a couple of half chances and we should have scored six or seven ourselves.”

It appears manager Manuel Pellegrini has settled on his first choice backline, after chopping and changing in the first few games of the campaign.

Angelo Ogbonna seems to have edged out Fabian Balbuena for a place alongside Issa Diop in the centre of defence, while Arthur Masuaku has cemented his place ahead of Aaron Cresswell at left-back after a good display at the weekend.

The Congolese international provided the assist for Sebastien Haller’s opening goal to set West Ham on their way to a 2-0 win.