The West Ham United and Sunderland midfielders are simply not delivering.
West Ham United and Sunderland are two huge clubs struggling to make a go of it this season, with the Hammers in the Premier League drop zone and the Black Cats fearing the prospect of successive relegations after a terrible start to their Championship campaign.
Of course, there is a huge amount of football still to be played, and neither side is expected to be in their current position come May, but two players in particular have come in for plenty of criticism after their respective club’s fall from grace.
West Ham skipper Mark Noble has been a target of the boo boys for some time now, and yet still he remains a regular starter when fit and available.
Injury ruled him out of recent matches against Huddersfield Town and West Bromwich Albion and West Ham picked up four points. He returned against Tottenham Hotspur and the Hammers lost their fourth league game of the season, shipping another three goals in the process.
In short, Noble is not worth of a starting spot in his current form, something that could also be said of Sunderland’s Lee Cattermole.
The 29-year-old is a one-time fan favourite at the Stadium of Light, and yet this season he has been well below his best at exactly the time when Sunderland needed him to be battling his way through each and every encounter.
Instead Cattermole has skippered his side to just six points from a possible 27 and that is simply not good enough.
For now West Ham and Sunderland persist with players who are their club through and through. However that is not enough anymore. They need to make a difference on the pitch, the right kind of difference, and neither has done that for an alarmingly long time.
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