West Ham captain Kevin Nolan: My red cards left me feeling as bad as relegation

EXCLUSIVE: Midfielder says last few weeks have been among the most difficult of his career
Ken Dyer21 January 2014

It's bad enough when your main striker is injured for the first half of the season but when your captain is sent off, not once but twice in the space of less than a month, it begins to look as though things are out of control.

Andy Carroll’s foot problem has been regrettable but unavoidable for West Ham. Kevin Nolan’s two red cards fall into a different category.

After all, Nolan is Sam Allardyce’s leader on the pitch — and back in the dressing-room. Things have been tough for the West Ham manager and his players recently but for the last seven games, his captain has been out of the equation, suspended and sorry.

Nolan comes back tonight, at what could be a half-empty Boleyn Ground and with Manchester City 6-0 up after the first leg of this Capital One Cup semi-final, for a match no one really wants to play.

For Nolan, though, it is a first significant step back on a road to redemption and a chance, at some stage tonight, to rekindle a telepathic understanding with his good friend Carroll who is easing his way back to fitness.

“The last few weeks have been among the most difficult of my career — certainly on a par with when I joined Newcastle and they got relegated,” says Nolan. “That was a tough time but I came through it and when I go back up there now, they treat me well, I get respect because they know what I’m about — I’m a fighter.

“What’s happened to me over the last month was very out of character. I’ve never been through anything like that before — but I have now and I’m hoping to prove, by the end of the season, that I’ve come through it.

“Things have been made easier by the support I’ve had from my family, friends and Lee Richardson, the club psychologist. It’s at times like this you appreciate who is next to you — who is around you — and my support system is fantastic.”

Nolan’s first red came for a lunge at Jordan Henderson in the 4-1 defeat at Liverpool in early December. Just three games into his return from suspension he was in more trouble. An off-the-ball kick at Fulham’s Fernando Amorebieta earned him a dismissal and a four-game suspension under the totting up procedure.

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“I know what I did was wrong,” said Nolan. “I thought it was quite a harsh sending-off at Fulham but, at the end of the day, I had put myself in that situation. That disappointed me most. It was my fault — there was no one else to blame. I’ve let people down.

“I’ve had to take it on the chin, it’s been dealt with, the gaffer has had his say and rightly so, he’s told me what he expects of me and now it’s up to me. I have to deal with it and I’m big enough, strong enough and ugly enough to do that.

“After I was sent off at Fulham I just went and sat in the toilet. Pete, the kit man, was there in the dressing-room — he tried to console me a bit and if there’s one person you want to see when something that bad happens, he’d be top of the list. He gave me a big hug and that’s just the way we are as a club. We all support each other.

“I’ve apologised to all the lads and they’ve said, ‘we all make mistakes, let’s just forget about it and get on with it’. If it had happened to anyone else they would have got the same reaction from me but it was nice to know I had the full support of all those boys.

“I’ve been in a lot of dressing rooms and it’s easy to say, ‘we’ve got a great bunch of lads’ when things are going well. When it starts going a bit wrong, though, that’s the real test of a dressing-room. Then you can get people talking behind backs but there’s never been anything like that here. We’re very much in it together.

“I’ve been pretty low but thankfully I had my family and friends. Without them, you don’t know how dark it could have got. I hope I can repay the faith of people.”

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