Moyes demands Rice to step up to fill in for retiring skipper Noble

After 18 seasons representing his boyhood club, West Ham, Noble brought his career to an end with

taking captaincy armband.  Taking a break from the team's pre-season preparations at the club's east London training base, David Moyes told

regarding Mark Noble's retirement:

"There is a big void.

"I can feel it now because he played such a big part, pulling the players together, doing lots of things and keeping them close. He was really important for us.

"Now Dec has to step up to another level of not just how he plays on the pitch but his leadership off the pitch and dealing with a lot of the other things that go on.”

Rice

told earlier in the day:

"I know I'm going to be captain of West Ham for this season and it's an honour.

"To take it from Nobes is special. It's a dream. To be captain of any club in the world is an honour and to captain West Ham with the history behind the club is special."

"He's a young man who is still learning and maybe it was a little bit easier for him being captain last season knowing Mark Noble was in the building and those two could work it out,"

Moyes

added.

"But hopefully we've surrounded him with Lukasz Fabianski and Aaron Cresswell, Angelo Ogbonna - people who have been at the club a long time and can help him with their experience."

Regarding

' last season, where they pushed for a top-four finish until late in the campaign and reached the semi-finals of the Europa League, Moyes says the challenge now for West Ham is to continue to stride forwards, he added:

"Done well, could do better.

“I wanted to finish higher, I was trying to push the players hard to do that. In the end, when you look at the way the season went, I don't think I'll be able to complain too much about it. But I felt we missed some opportunities and the momentum, we tried to keep it going, but we just lost a little bit at the end. Maybe there were real reasons for it but we're over it now, we've moved on and hopefully, we can get ready for the new season.

"Quite often to move means you could go forward quickly or you could drop and then you have to wait until you come back," he said. "We're in a period at West Ham where we're in that at the moment.

"We've had a group of players who have been fantastic for us in the past two and a half years and they've taken us away from relegation problems to a team challenging at the top.

"Yes we've added one or two players on the journey as well but we're on the next part of the journey now. We're needing to bring in more players to give us that opportunity to compete.

"You only need to look at the buying and amount teams can pay at the top to get the top players, whether it be wages or transfer fees, that can make it much more difficult for other clubs to compete."

Follow 

 for the