Mark Noble was offered one shot and it was of the kind that, throughout his career, he has dispatched with chilling reliability. A handball from Luke Shaw had offered West Ham the chance to salvage a draw during an extraordinary finale and, in fairness to David Moyes, he thought he was on to a sure thing. Noble had taken 42 penalties since turning professional and missed just four; in fact he had not fluffed his lines since 2016. So Moyes turned to his one-man cavalry and, barely breaking stride, Noble jogged from the substitutes’ bench to the spot.
By coincidence, David de Gea had not repelled a penalty for nearly five and a half years. But perhaps this pile‑up of encouraging statistics, coupled with the self-consciously dramatic act of loading the fate of an entire afternoon on a player’s only kick of the game, tilted the odds another way.
