MARK NOBLE

I don't think I will fully appreciate it until I have retired. My dad will ring me after a game and if we've lost it's the end of the world for me but he will say: 'I don't think you realise - you are captain of West Ham, you grew up supporting the club.'

I played at White Hart Lane against Michael Carrick and Edgar Davids when I was 18.

I was walking along somewhere in the Maldives and there were West Ham fans there. It's crazy.

I ended up buying a van to chuck all my fishing gear in because I couldn't keep using my car.

You can't play man to man against Liverpool and out-pass them. You have to keep your shape and stop them.

I'm as passionate as the fans, I want West Ham to do well whether I'm in the team or not.

I want to score but when you think of the soldiers in Iraq with bullets flying around their heads you realise a penalty isn't something to get too worried about.

Chicharito is a goal machine - he gets one chance and scores.

You want to play in the Premier League, full stop. You don't want to play in the Championship. I've played there and I don't want to play there again for West Ham.

I'm English, I've always wanted to play for England but it's out of my hands.

You have to hit the ground running at West Ham. If you don't, suddenly from the fans it's, 'You're not good enough to play for our football club.'

To wear this shirt, especially with the West Ham badge on it - it takes an honest player, hard-working, a player that leaves everything on the pitch and plays for the crest on the shirt.

If I'm on my way to play a round of golf there is an anxiety in me, a feeling of 'I can't lose today.'

I've played under Alan Pardew, Gianfranco Zola, Avram Grant, Sam Allardyce, Alan Curbishley and Slaven's made me captain.

I know Billy Bonds quite well and he is a fantastic person and was a fantastic player.

I always wanted to be one of the best players in the world like Zinedine Zidane, so it was great that I ended up playing at West Ham against some of the best players in the world.

The Premier League is a results business.

The way football is, sometimes, everything that could go wrong goes wrong. You have to dig yourselves out of that by simply working hard and sticking together.

I've been lucky enough to experience some big tournaments at Under-21 level and would love to be part of a World Cup in England.

If you want to pay money for an English talent you pay way over the odds. You get players from abroad really cheap.

We're not robots, we're not factory built. We have feelings, we have families and we go through tough times that people don't know about. Sometimes your form isn't good and there's a reason for that. Sometimes the team isn't playing well and you can't quite work out why.

I used to do a lot of fishing with my dad, usually in Beckton Boating Lake.

I love playing football. I always look at it as there's a lot worse things you can be doing than coming into a training ground in the morning and playing footy and having a laugh with the boys.

Don't get me wrong, I love training and I love playing but everyday life? People see the money and the material things that footballers have but you get to a Premier League level because you have something inside you and you can play. Ninety per cent of that is self-pride.

I've been here for 19 years, so West Ham fans are bored with seeing me. It's like my wife, who changes the wallpaper every three years because she gets tired of it.