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West Ham goal of the season: Did Noble edge out Anderson?

ByAdam Smith|
LONDON, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 09: Mark Noble of West Ham United (L) celebrates with teammate Felipe Anderson after scoring his team's first goal during the Premier League match between Crystal Palace and West Ham United at Selhurst Park on February 9, 2019 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Warren Little/Getty Images)
LONDON, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 09: Mark Noble of West Ham United (L) celebrates with teammate Felipe Anderson after scoring his team's first goal during the Premier League match between Crystal Palace and West Ham United at Selhurst Park on February 9, 2019 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Warren Little/Getty Images)

Of the excitement created in West Ham’s 4-1 win over Watford in the season finale, none touched Mark Noble’s solo-effort wonder goal. With his late, stunning goal does it surpass Felipe Anderson’s goal of the season?

West Ham’s 2019 Player Awards have come and gone. Aside from the notable Hammer of the Year award, it’s clear that goal of the season is one of the highlight awards. Far from controversy when handed out, Felipe Anderson nabbed the award with a world-class curling long shot.

Anderson’s goal was the third and match-winning striker against Crystal Palace on December 8th. After some quick build-up play following Hernandez’s 62nd-minute goal, Anderson found the ball at his feet with time and space to pick a beautiful shot over the diving keeper. The fan view does the most justice for how class this shot was.

Nothing else really came close to challenging this goal for West Ham. In typical West Ham fashion, this season was peppered with scrappy goals and a few outliers like this Anderson strike. That is until Mark Noble got his hands on that Watford midfield.

Reminiscent of his Leicester City 20-yard post-and-in volley to end last season, Noble thought he would punctuate West Ham’s season yet again. I described it as a thinking man’s goal because Noble reads the open space and defenders extremely well.

After recovering the ball, Noble takes it to the center of the park before playing a give-and-go with Michail Antonio, where he dashes into a massively vacant space in the Watford midfield. Up to the edge of the box, Noble looks off Arnautovic’s run to turn the defender with a cutback dribble, giving him open space to pick the bottom corner. It was truly exceptional!

I’m not asking for a redaction of Anderson’s Goal of the Season award, but wouldn’t it have been nice if it was a two-horse race? Noble would surely have stolen a fair chunk of votes from Anderson’s wonder-strike, but the context may favor Anderson in this matchup.

Regardless, it’s awesome to see Hammers spanning technical abilities form Anderson to Noble (not a slight, I promise) able to capture our excitement with near equally exciting goals. I know both players have more magic in them for next season and am poised for that excitement, too!