A nostalgic look at the ground that has been West Ham United’s home since 1904… Filmed the day before the final Premier League game against Manchester United in May 2016. ODAF features footage and interviews from recent and archive West Ham history – follow us now on @ODAF2020 on twitter to make sure you keep up to date with all new releases on the channel…
An Evening With Billy Bonds (Trailer)
Trailer for a fantastic show from June 2009 hosted by Tony Cottee and Tony Gale that we will be broadcasting soon on @ODAF2020, interviewing one of West Ham’s greatest ever players, who discusses his playing days, being a manager and the heartbreak of leaving the club in 1994 and the fallout from the end of his relationship with Harry Redknapp – don’t miss it! Follow us on Twitter now @ODAF2020 for details of up and coming shows…
Steve Potts
Steve Potts is one of the last true one club heroes whose career at West Ham United pre-dates the advent of the Premier League. He may have only ever scored one goal for West Ham in an illustrious 506 match career, but he was part of the 1985-86 season squad, and captained the side in the early part of the 1990s as well as earning the accolade of ‘Hammer of the Year’ twice in 1993 and 1995, as well as being runner-up in 1992 and 1994 – that’s consistency. His shy and retiring demeanour contrasted with his intelligent distribution and skilful tackling in a West Ham shirt. Billy Bonds, the manager who first gave Pottsy the armband, declared him ‘Up there with the very best there’s been at the club.’ @ODAF2020
Bryan ‘Pop’ Robson
Bryan ‘Pop’ Robson enjoyed two profitable spells at West Ham, but was ultimately denied a trophy, leaving after his first spell just before the FA Cup win of 1975, and then leaving his second spell just before the FA Cup win of 1980. Robson’s prolific 104 goals in 254 appearances included a memorable 28 goals in the 1972-73 season when West Ham finished 6th in the old first division. Robson was West Ham’s top goalscorer in all four seasons he played for the club, a phenomenal achievement. Check out his sublime finishing in this Legends programme. @ODAF2020
Alvin Martin
Captain of the greatest ever West Ham United side that finished third in the top flight of English football in 1985-86, Alvin Martin is a real West Ham United legend. A skilful and consistent footballer as a youngster, he became so much more with his reading of the game, his skills of anticipation and aerial domination over some of the best strikers produced by the decade of the 1980s, when English teams dominated Europe. His seventeen England caps included being part of Bobby Robson’s 1986 World Cup squad, where he played in the victory over Paraguay. Martin’s 586 Hammers appearances and 32 goal career also includes being a central part of the 1980 FA Cup win and represents an astounding achievement of performance and loyalty. Truly a West Ham legend. @ODAF2020
Sir Geoff Hurst
The story of Sir Geoff Hurst’s incredible West Ham United career – looking through some of his greatest West Ham United goals, his England career, winning the FA Cup and the often forgotten fact that he even managed Chelsea for a short period (we forgive you) – unseen footage and photos make up this lively and supportive historical programme about the only man to have ever scored a hat-trick in a World Cup Final. Follow us on Twitter @ODAF2020
Billy Bonds
This episode in the WHU Legends series focuses on the career of one of West Ham’s best loved players and managers, Billy Bonds. There are goals, assists, hard tackles and highlights all from a player who was still making first team selection at the ripe old age of 41. There are a few unexpected and unique moments in this short programme that will delight and entertain any fan of the Hammers, and particularly those who want to hear more about a unique servant to the club who took them twice to both promotion to the upper tier and FA Cup success, the second time as the last club outside the top flight to win England’s most coveted domestic knock-out trophy. Follow us on Twitter @ODAF2020
Bobby Moore
Bobby Moore to most followers of the Hammers is West Ham United. From his debut in 1958 to the last games before he moved to Fulham in the mid 70s, Moore was always at the top of his game. A player who, despite his lack of pace, possessed a footballing brain that made acceleration unnecessary. With pinpoint passing and a level of anticipation that saved him and West Ham from goal danger on many occasions, Moore was the ultimate professional. As a man unassuming, as a player unsurpassed, it could only have been Moore who was good enough to captain England to World Cup Glory in 1966, the only time they have ever got to a final, let alone won the competition. Two years before, he captained West Ham United to FA Cup success in 1964 and then the European Cup Winners Cup trophy in 1965. The fact that these remain some of West Ham’s greatest achievements all these years later, speaks reams about a player who was taken from us too soon in 1993 with cancer, aged just 51.
@ODAF2020
Test post
v Arsenal (A)
LAST GAME BEFORE LOCKDOWN
Arsenal 1 West Ham United 0
Saturday 7th March 2020
People are beginning to realise that something is changing in the world that has nothing to do with football, though it may well affect it. The COVID-19 virus first appeared in Wuhan City, China, in late December 2019. Last Tuesday cases have begun to emerge in Spain, but the World Health Organisation have yet to declare it a pandemic. Nevertheless we have now seen the first person to die of it on English soil, a seventy year old woman from Reading, just two days ago.
After West Ham United’s superb 3-1 demolition of Southampton last weekend which has lifted the side clear of the relegation zone and inspired some new-found confidence in David Moyes’ men, a visit to the mercurial Arsenal may just be what is needed. Arsenal’s ragged home form which saw them lose all three games in December to Brighton, Manchester City and Chelsea, has been reversed by recent victories over Newcastle United and Everton, but the side haven’t won away since December – we won’t point out who that was against.
The Hammers have lost their last five away games, but the last of these was a narrow 2-3 reverse at Anfield, with Lukasz Fabianski making two errors that gifted goals to the reds, possibly his first such mistakes for the side, so there is a welling up of enthusiasm when they take to the field. There are 60,335 fans crammed into the Emirates for the game, and the fans fell silent as early as the second minute when Jarrod Bowen turned well only to see his well-aimed left foot shot, that almost beat Leno, spin away for a corner off the foot of the post. Eight minutes later Michail Antonio burst through on the right after a brilliant one-two with Pablo Fornals that gave him a clear shot on goal, only to suddenly turn provider instead of executioner, laying the ball behind the too-swiftly advancing Sébastien Haller, from where it was cleared with relief by Nicolas Pepe who had made good ground into a saving cover position for Arsenal.
West Ham continued to push forward throughout the first half, breaking confidently, and eighteen minutes in Mark Noble’s slide rule short pass found Haller with a genuine goal chance that disappeared as soon as it had arrived after a heavy first touch. Sokratis hit the top of the bar with a header as Arsenal began to settle. Six minutes from half-time a Mark Noble corner found Issa Diop, whose header was turned inches wide by Antonio just a yard out from goal. These four gilt-edged opportunities in the first half suggested a fate that was to prevail.
Arsenal improved in the second half and Fabianki saved well from Nketiah’s low effort seven minutes after the restart, but two minutes later Cresswell’s cross was flicked on by Haller only for Leno to deny Antonio’s header with an acrobatic save. Hammers continued to press forward and Bowen stretched Leno with a powerful low shot, but twelve minutes from time a blocked shot spun out to Mezut Özil whose header was dispatched by Alexandre Lacazette, looking a good two feet offside. Referee Martin Atkinson immediately disallowed the goal as Sian Massey-Ellis’s flag had been immediately raised, but the good VAR people in Stockton Park had other ideas, eventually, after a few seconds short of three minutes. There is something about a goal awarded after this kind of delay, especially one which looked irregular to the naked eye, that provides a metaphorical winding punch to the gut of the side that concede it. It was proved with the necessary technology that Ogbonna had indeed played Özil onside by a couple of inches, but the VAR award still felt somehow more like a theft than an act of justice.
Pulling their socks up, Hammers returned to battle, determined that this mishap should not shape the eventual outcome of the game, and seven minutes from time Bowen found Haller in the area with an impossibly precise pass that Haller this time struck perfectly only to be denied by another expert reflex save from Leno. It would have been a richly deserved finish for Moyes’ side who had battled well with six direct efforts on goal to Arsenal’s two over the ninety minutes, despite having just 39% possession.
Other results over the weekend proved less harsh than the events of the match and Hammers were to preserve their position outside of the relegation zone, albeit narrowly on goal difference above Watford and Bournemouth.
Looking back at this report at the end of April, 53 days later from a very different football-free world, this game seems a lifetime away. The following weekend’s Premier League games were all postponed, and although we hear that West Ham began training yesterday, and that there may well be a recommencement of the league in early June, this season will not be completed by games played in front of stadiums heaving with expectant fans. The idea of completing the 2019/20 season with the remaining games played behind closed doors seems the only realistic solution. The French football season was suspended this week until September, this week will tell us whether the English ones will suffer the same fate.
And so West Ham lost a game that perhaps they should have won, a sentence that their fans will have read many times before, in different publications. It will in all likelihood be the last time it is written four days before the World Health Organisation’s declaration that we are officially in the grip of a world pandemic.
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 52 Jeremy Ngakia, 23 Issa Diop, 21 Angelo Ogbonna, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 17 Jarrod Bowen, 16 Mark Noble (captain), 41 Declan Rice, 18 Pablo Fornals, 30 Michail Antonio, 22 Sebastien Haller
Substitutes: 11 Robert Snodgrass, 8 Felipe Anderson, 28 Tomas Soucek
West Ham United’s Leap Year Day
Saturday 29th February 2020
If you were asked just how many games West Ham have played on February 29th since their inception in 1900, you would soon realise that it couldn’t be that many. Today would be the thirtieth such potential fixture since that time, but then prior to the advent of the Premier League in 1992, games were generally only played on Saturdays, with cup replays and the odd postponed fixtures in midweek, so a scheduled game on that day is always going to be a rare event. Thames Ironworks did manage one such fixture on Saturday February 29th 1896, when the Irons were beaten 4-2 away at Reading.
FA Cup Quarter Final Saturday February 29th 1964
West Ham 3 Burnley 2
This is the fixture that remains to date West Ham’s only victory on Leap Year Day, and it was one to remember for the club. 36, 651 fans crammed into Upton Park for their second successive FA Cup Quarter Final, the previous season’s effort heralding elimination at the sixth round stage 1-0 at Anfield by Liverpool. A home tie raised more hope this time round, and Ron Greenwood fielded the same eleven players who would feature in every tie throughout the club’s successful FA Cup run that year: Standen, Bond, Burkett, Bovington, Brown, Moore, Brabrook, Boyce, Byrne, Hurst and Sissons.
Burnley were in their heyday, having won the league in 1960, finishing fourth, second and third in the three years following, so would be offering sterner opposition than Charlton, Leyton Orient and Swindon Town had posed in the previous three rounds. Burnley’s John Connelly gave his side the lead in the thirteenth minute with a brilliant run, evading three tackles as he sped through on goal, firing into the corner past Jim Standen. West Ham struggled throughout the first half, and were flattered by the score at half-time. The second half was a different matter however, and John Sissons, a pre-match guest at our last home game v Brighton, sent over a long dipping cross in the 57th minute that beat Blacklaw, leaving just Elder defending on the line who could only help it into the net. The equaliser fired the Hammers into an all out assault, and just three minutes later Johnny Byrne finished off a superb four man move that he had begun, involving Moore, Hurst and Brabrook, finishing with a powerful volley from the edge of the area to give Hammers the lead for the first time in the tie. Byrne scored his second and West Ham’s third eight minutes later, rounding the keeper with a controversial finish after an alleged earlier foul on Miller. Burnley pulled one back ten minutes from time, but it was only a consolation as Hammers stormed into their first FA Cup semi-final for 31 years.
The other four fixtures West Ham have played on Leap Year Day were not as successful, the club failing to score in any of them. Only one of those four games was at home, in 1992, against Everton, for whom Tony Cottee played that day. As the team take the field today to face Southampton, they can take some hope from the fact that this is their first ever Leap Year Day Premier League fixture, and all records are made and set to be broken.
Previous Leap Year Day League Clashes
Saturday February 29th 1908 Brentford 4 West Ham United 0
Saturday February 29th 1936 Burnley 1 West Ham United 0
Tuesday February 29th 1972 Sheffield United 3 West Ham United 0
Saturday February 29th 1992 West Ham United 0 Everton 2
Saturday February 29th 2020 West Ham United v Southampton
So no goals on this day, no points, no success. This season West Ham play Southampton at home on Saturday February 29th, but they have only played three other games on this leap year day in the last seventy years, all of them as a top flight club, but none as a Premier League team.
West Ham are eighteenth in the Premier League, in the relegation zone, and needing urgently to win especially as they only have recorded one success at home in 2020 which was the 4-0 New Year Day’s victory over Bournemouth. Curiously, just like their last home game on February 29th in 1992, there are protests against the Board outside the ground before kick off, but although a few thousand congregate, it is a protest that for the moment seems consigned to outside. These affairs seem to last as long as it takes the side to score a decent comfortable victory. The 1991-92 side were eventually relegated from the last ever First Division. Maybe today’s Premier League fixture will be one with a different ending.
Jarrod Bowen, West Ham’s £18m striker, makes his first start, and after just twelve minutes, Bowen starts to make the money look well spent with a powerful shot which James Ward-Prowse does well to block for a corner. Two minutes later Pablo Fornals pounces on a poor clearance and slides Bowen through for a deliciously expert finish to put the Hammers ahead on his debut.
Southampton who haven’t really been in the game at all up to this point, snatch an equaliser on the half hour from Michael Obafemi, who expertly chips Ward-Prowse’s cross over Fabianski for an intelligent finish.
West Ham take the lead again with an odd goal, perfect for a game played on February 29th. Sébastien Haller plays a neat pass to Antonio who hits in a looping cross for which Haller and McCarthy challenge. You’ve seen these a hunded times. It always ends with the goalkeeper punching the ball cleanly away. Except this time McCarthy decides he’s going to catch it, and his flailing hands are no match for Haller’s jump, and he heads the ball clear of the keeper and lithely connects with it at the far post – his own assist – to restore West Ham’s lead.
The second half is a little less frenetic, and West Ham add to their lead ten minutes after the restart when a neat back header from Haller allows Fornals the chance to play Antonio through, and he finishes with a powerful right foot shot past McCarthy. 3-1. On the hour Antonio has the chance to score a second after a cheeky rabona from Haller, but this time McCarthy manages to get something on it to divert it inches wide. Hammers ended the week with their first league goals and league points ever recorded on a February 29th. The next one that falls on a Saturday is in 2048. Put it in your diary now.
v Brighton & Hove Albion (H)
West Ham United 3 Brighton & Hove Albion 3
Saturday 1st February 2020
Just a month after beginning his second spell at London Stadium, David Moyes is beginning to realise that saving the club from the dull magnetic pull of the Championship might not be the slam dunk it may have originally appeared. January offered a home win and an FA Cup triumph at Gillingham, but one lone point from four league games and a bundling out of the FA Cup at the hands of Slaven Bilic’s West Brom – Bilic was the man he took over from last time at the club, remember – put the task ahead into focus.
Still, a home fixture against Brighton, a club just two points ahead of West Ham in the table, offered a chance to ‘stop the rot’. In their first attack of the game, Brighton’s Aaron Moy headed a perfectly placed cross wide from the edge of the corner of the six yard box when it looked easier to score. A few minutes later Brighton’s Trossard was put clear but fluffed his finish. The difference between the teams eventually proved to be the power and pace of the returning Antonio, the energy and flair of the Czech debutant Tomáš Souček, and the industrious Robert Snodgrass, someone you would always want to seed your lawn – he would not miss an inch. And it was Snodgrass’ curling concave cross that found Issa Diop at the far post to toe-poke West Ham in front. Snodgrass himself gave Hammers a two goal interval lead on the stroke of half-time with a heavily deflected shot from inside the area from Fredericks’ cross. West Ham’s season was now into February with still only three home games won, but at least this one now looked in the bag.
The new paragraph should indicate that things are never that straightforward with the Hammers. For the neutrals and Brighton fans, their first goal response a couple of minutes into the second half was an absolute comedy classic. Mildly under pressure from Glenn Murray, the returning Brighton striker who always seems to score against West Ham, Fabianski saved him the bother of scoring by punching Pascal Gross’s corner into Ogbonna, and the Italian defender dispatched the assist into the top corner off his back. Despite this unexpected setback, Hammers continued to press forward fired by the running and energy of Michail Antonio, and ten minutes later from a Cresswell corner Snodgrass struck the ball sweetly home from just inside the area, via Bernardo’s head, for his second deflected goal of the game, guaranteeing a double entry on the dodgy goals committee agenda on Monday. With an hour gone, Moyes chose to focus on preserving the lead with a double substitution, replacing Souček and Antonio with Masuaku and Fornals. The tactic made sense, but seemed to take the zip out of the home team’s performance, which they didn’t recover.
Ultimately this game of deflected goals and moments of high comedy enjoyed another rib tickler a quarter of an hour before the end when Diop and Ogbonna tragically froze like twins in a traffic accident to allow Gross in to poke at the ball before Fabianski could reach it, his contact proving just sufficient for it to roll agonisingly slowly into the corner of the net like the pot of an expert snooker player. That still wouldn’t have been enough for a two point surrender, but then five minutes later Murray managed his regular London Stadium goal, his first in the League since the previous May, firing in from close range after appearing to control the ball with his hand. The hated VAR suddenly seemed to be about to intervene in the role of saviour. This time though the various replays proved inconclusive and the goal was given. Lanzini was brought on for the tiring Snodgrass but there was to be no last minute winner. Indeed, had it not been for Fabianski’s Olympic leap to tip over Solly March’s curling, dipping free kick it could have been a completely pointless day out. As it was, West Ham’s season long habit of surrendering leads was again in evidence, as was a first drop into the bottom three. With trips to Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal to come in the weeks ahead, things are looking a little tragic.
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 24 Ryan Fredericks, 23 Issa Diop, 21 Angelo Ogbonna, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 16 Mark Noble (captain), 41 Declan Rice, 11 Robert Snodgrass, 26 Tomas Soucek, 30 Michail Antonio, 22 Sebastien Haller
Substitutes: 10 Manuel Lanzini, 18 Pablo Fornals, 26 Arthur Masuaku
Goals: Issa Diop (30), Robert Snodgrass / Adam Webster (45), Robert Snodgrass / Bernardo (57).
v Bournemouth (H)
West Ham United 4 Bournemouth 0
Wednesday 1st January 2020
Few managers will have such a start to their career in the hot seat than David Moyes did at London Stadium on New Year’s Day 2020. Moyes was of course famously first mentioned in the context of West Ham by the Manchester City fans in the first of a two-legged League Cup Semi-Final at the Etihad Stadium almost exactly six years ago, managed then by the man he was now taking over from, one Manuel Pellegrini. As the goal celebrations after City’s fifth subsided on the hour, the home fans let rip with, “You’re getting Moyes in the morning. Moyes in the moooor-ning, you’re getting Moyes in the morning.”
Of course, strictly speaking, this wasn’t Moyes’ first game as manager of West Ham. It was the first of his second spell, his earlier first spell debut being an away fixture at Watford in November 2017, which West Ham lost 2-0. He has the same job of keeping the club in the Premier League as he did last time he was appointed, but this time his contract is for eighteen months and not just six. On his second debut things went a lot better for him, and the Hammers were pretty much home and dry at half-time as they left the pitch three goals up against a weary looking Bournemouth side. Mark Noble grabbed a brace through a deflected shot and a penalty, his first goals for the club since the opening day of the season, but Sebastien Haller’s spectacular volley from Fredericks’ angled cross was the pick of the three.
Prior to this game, West Ham had only won two matches at London Stadium, both back in the sunshine of late August and September against Norwich City and, arguably Moyes’ greatest managerial disappointment, Manchester United. A fifty per cent improvement on the home league form was a perfect start to the new decade.
Bournemouth were poor, but West Ham have played lesser sides this season who have left the ground with all three points, so no one in claret and blue livery was complaining. Collecting Declan Rice’s perfect through ball with a neat first touch, Felipe Anderson scored his first of the season and West Ham’s fourth with twenty minutes left. Bournemouth have lost out through VAR decisions twice against West Ham this season – they had a potential winning goal cancelled out in their home fixture against the Hammers in September, and were also denied a one man advantage when the club programme’s cover star Aaron Cresswell saw a straight red for his challenge on Ryan Fraser commuted to a mere booking.
This was the perfect start to a new reign and a new year, and with another transfer window opening, David Moyes would no doubt have a few players in mind that would help him and West Ham secure Premier League footballing status for a fifth successive season at the new stadium.
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 2 Ryan Fredericks, 4 Fabian Balbuena, 21 Angelo Ogbonna, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 11 Robert Snodgrass, 16 Mark Noble (captain), 41 Declan Rice, 18 Pablo Fornals, 8 Felipe Anderson, 22 Sebastien Haller
Substitutes: 10 Manuel Lanzini, 26 Arthur Masuaku
Goals: Mark Noble (18), Sebastien Haller (26), Mark Noble (36, penalty), Felipe Anderson (67).
Why There Will Never Be Another Player Like Martin Peters
Martin Peters has always been my favourite Hammer. As one of the West Ham United triumvirate that formed the nucleus of England’s 1966 World Cup winning side, he was already a footballing legend to me at the age of eight, but though this was probably his greatest footballing achievement, he was so much more than that. The then England manager Sir Alf Ramsay once described him as a player ‘ten years ahead of his time.’ It was a phrase that caught my attention alongside the revelation that he had played for West Ham United in every position there was. In 1962, the first year he played for the club, he scored his first goal and also donned the goalkeeper’s jersey, when West Ham’s regular keeper Brian Rhodes was injured. When I discovered Peters was this play-anywhere footballer, I began to feel that he must possess superhero powers, like Superman from the DC comics I read weekly. The nickname ‘Ghost,’ given to him at West Ham for his ability to arrive unnoticed into goalscoring (and goalsaving) positions, described another of his superhero qualities, both unattainable and unique. He was without doubt the reason I first became interested in football, and when I finally saw him playing on television for West Ham, nothing I saw changed my mind. He looked even more enigmatic than the sticker of him in my first division Soccer Stars book. Peters eventually scored 81 goals for the club over the better part of a decade.
If you search for two of Peters’ most famous England goals on the internet, both against West Germany in the 1966 and 1970 World Cup finals, you will see a player arriving late at the far post, just in the right place, evading all defenders to fire the ball explosively into the net. In 1970 when he scored the second of these to put England 2-0 up against West Germany, Hugh Johns, the ITV commentator, declared, ‘There it is! It’s Hurst, Geoff Hurst!’ seconds later adding, ‘Martin Peters, sorry…’ The ‘ghost’ had even evaded the eye of the man commentating live on the game. Curiously, England wouldn’t score another goal at a World Cup finals until 1982, twelve long years later. They obviously missed him and his goals – his 20 from just 67 internationals was a great scoring record for a midfielder.
When my parents said I was old enough to go to a West Ham game on my own, it was the 1970-71 season, and I was twelve. For that first game, West Ham were away at Tottenham Hotspur. I was finally going to see my hero Martin Peters in the flesh. I travelled to the game with Nick, a friend from school, who was a Tottenham Hotspur fan. These of course were not days with mobile phones, the internet or social media, so information about your favourite team was at a premium, unless you went to see them every play every other weekend. This was my first West Ham game and my friend revealed to me on the way to the game that, five months earlier, Peters had been transferred for £200,000 to Tottenham. I thought it was the greatest wind up of all time before my first ever game but, sadly for me, it wasn’t. And so it was that the first time I saw my favourite player live on a football pitch, it was in another team’s colours. I realised intuitively that in such situations you must follow the club and not the player, and it was with a heavy heart that I found myself having to accept that my favourite player was no longer ‘ours’. A reasonable second prize on that day in front of 53,640 fans was the discovery that we had signed a certain legendary goalscorer known as Jimmy Greaves, who scored for West Ham on the day in a 2-2 draw. And I still got to see my hero that afternoon.
Peters died four days before Christmas 2019.
There will never be another player like him.
