Mark Noble believes West Ham United can look to the future with renewed optimism after their 3-0 win over Crystal Palace.

After a testing week off the pitch, in which Dimitri Payet refused to play for the club, the victory has lifted the mood around London Stadium and taken United to 12th in the Premier League.

The Hammers captain feels the win will relieve pressure on West Ham ahead of an away clash with Middlesbrough on Saturday.

“A win settles the nerves and puts everything on the backburner and we can look forward to Middlesbrough,” Noble told the club website.

“It was definitely a satisfying end to the week. Obviously we had the Dimitri Payet situation, Big Sam coming back and Tonks (James Tomkins), who is a friend of ours coming back, so there were lots of factors in play.

“Once we got that first goal, I thought we were the old West Ham. We went two up-front to cause them a few more problems and it worked, so it was a really commanding performance in the end.”

The build-up to Saturday’s match had been understandably dominated by the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the wantaway Payet.

The Frenchman is unquestionably among the club’s best players and any potential departure would weaken Slaven Bilic’s squad significantly.

Noble accepts Payet has played an instrumental role for West Ham since joining the club last summer, but insists the standoff gives others the opportunity to shine.

He said: “It gives players the chance to step up, and I said all week in training to players like Manu, Sofiane, big Andy and Michail.

“We have lost our best player and we need to step up because we need to score goals.

“I’m not taking credit for that (the goals we scored) but they did it on Saturday.”

Andy Carroll’s superb acrobatic effort was the standout moment of the match as the Hammers number nine launched himself into the air and rifled a bicycle kick into the top corner.

Noble was ideally positioned to appreciate the goal of the season contender and claims Carroll had produced a similar attempt in training during the week.

“I was right behind it and in line. It was fantastic,” he said. “Andy caught it well and funnily enough he hit the post with one on Thursday during set plays.”

The 29-year-old is eager for West Ham to build on the momentum gained from the win over Palace and is targeting a similar result at Middlesbrough.

“To bounce back with a 3-0 win against a strong Palace team was a really, really, really important result for the club,” he explained.

“We have put a big gap between ourselves and the bottom three and we can now move forward to Boro looking upwards rather than over our shoulders.”