Mark Noble: West Ham need five wins to be safe and I’m confident we can achieve that

I remember that day clearly because it was my cousin’s birthday and the family were meeting up in a pub in Upminster. I went there after the game thinking I would have a quiet couple of hours having a couple of drinks with my family, but when I went in it was absolute carnage and I can remember thinking, “This is wicked — just what I want”. That was in January 2007 and, believe me, those intervening 13 years have gone so quickly.

We have to recover quickly after Wednesday, while Brighton have had plenty of time to prepare, but we’re all fit now and I don’t think it matters much. We’re conditioned to cope with that and we’ll be fine.

Tomorrow marks two more milestones, with Aaron Cresswell playing his 200th game for the club and Angelo Ogbonna his 150th, if selected, if course.

They are both vital members of the team. They both speak up if they need to and they’re both great to have around the place.

Angelo has always been quick and strong, but his positional play has improved a lot as he’s got older, while Aaron was a fantastic signing from Ipswich and has played regularly for us since he joined in 2014. He demonstrated that you can pluck real quality players from the Championship.

I always remember caning Angelo in his first training session. We were playing a game where, if you scored, your whole team had to be over the halfway line. His team scored and I could see he was in his own half. The manager asked him if he was over the halfway line and he said: “Yes.”

I said: “You’re lying”, but he didn’t understand until I showed him the video afterwards and we had a good laugh.

I was disappointed with my booking in the Liverpool game and what I would say is that every time I go to ground now and make a tackle, I am a nervous wreck.

I got a yellow on Wednesday night for my follow through. I honestly don’t know how you can tackle fairly on the ground and avoid that. Yet, if you don’t make the tackle and the opposition go on and score, you get blamed for that.

For the remaining hour on the pitch I couldn’t touch anyone. Sometimes I look at the game and think, “Where is it going?” I used to fly into tackles and mistime some but I can’t do that anymore.