Throughout the 2024/25 season, we're taking a look at some of the best players to have worn a range of squad numbers for West Ham United, since they were introduced for the start of the 1993/94 campaign.
Vote for your favourite No16 from the four chosen nominees below!
All West Ham No16s since 1993/94 | ||
|---|---|---|
1993-1994 | 1996 | 2005-2006 |
1994-1995 | 1996-2003 | 2006-2007 |
1995 | 2003-2004 | 2007-2022 |
1995-1996 | 2004-2005 |
|
Matty Holmes
DOB: 01.08.69 WHU: 1992-1995 Apps: 89 Goals: 6
Midfielder Matty Holmes was snapped up by then manager Billy Bonds in a £40,000 deal, rising to £60,000, in 1992, having earlier spent four years at Dean Court, where he made over 100 appearances for AFC Bournemouth.
Holmes’ debut season could not have gone any better, as he was a key member of the side that sealed promotion to the Premier League for the first time, while he then helped solidify the Club’s top-flight status for a further two seasons.
The now 55-year-old was often at the heart of the action during his 89 West Ham appearances in all competitions, and his strike to secure a 3-1 victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers on 6 March 1993 sealed a winning tribute to the late Bobby Moore on an emotion-filled day at the Boleyn Ground.
He finished runner-up to Trevor Morley in the race for the 1994 Hammer of the Year award, and joined newly-crowned Premier League champions Blackburn Rovers in the summer of 1995, subsequently featuring in the UEFA Champions League.
Lee Chapman
DOB: 05.12.59 WHU: 1993-1995 Apps: 51 Goals: 11
Ex-England youth forward Lee Chapman, the son of Lincoln City, Port Vale and Chester striker Roy Chapman, was one of English football’s most prolific goalscorers.
Having turned professional with Stoke City in the late 1970s, Chapman, an uncompromising, old-fashioned centre-forward, fuelled Leeds United’s First Division title glory in 1992, before joining West Ham United in September 1993.
When it comes to identifying West Ham’s most deadly strike partnership of the 1990s, many will consider Chapman and Trevor Morley, with the duo having notched 20 league goals between them in 1993/94, helping the Hammers to a 13th-place finish on their top-flight return.
One of the strangest moments of Chapman’s career in Claret and Blue occurred on 27 July 1994, when boss Harry Redknapp rewrote the script by replacing him with an abusive fan in a pre-season fixture at Oxford City.
That was the beginning of the end for Chapman, who made ten Premier League appearances in 1994/95 before joining Ipswich Town partway through that season.
John Moncur
DOB: 22.09.66 WHU: 1994-2003 Apps: 203 Goals: 9
West Ham United hero John Moncur is the second player to feature in two separate runnings of WHU Wore It Best. Moncur was initially allocated No10 for the first two seasons of his eventual nine-year spell in Claret and Blue, where he made 203 appearances and notched nine goals in all competitions.
Born in Stepney, boyhood West Ham supporter Moncur grabbed the opportunity to move to his beloved Hammers in 1994, joining the Premier League side from Swindon Town, and was the final signing for Billy Bonds as West Ham United manager before playing under the tutelage of Harry Redknapp, Glenn Roeder and Trevor Brooking, ahead of his retirement in summer 2003.
He featured in a host of iconic West Ham moments, including winning the UEFA Intertoto Cup and the incredible 5-4 victory over Bradford City in 2000.
Mark Noble
DOB: 08.05.87 WHU: 2004-2022 Apps: 550 Goals: 62
One of the most important figures in Irons history, ‘Mr West Ham’ Mark Noble made 550 appearances for the Club he supports between 2004 and 2022 and broke countless records, winning two Hammer of the Year awards and two promotions, epitomising the notion of ‘One of our Own’.
Born and raised in east London, Noble joined the Academy of Football at 13 and began a Claret and Blue journey that lasted more than two decades.
Noble made an outstanding start to his time at the Club, becoming West Ham’s youngest-ever reserve-team player at 15 and making his first-team debut in a League Cup win over Southend United at his beloved Boleyn Ground at 17 in August 2004, before producing a consistent series of displays that saw him appear in front of over 70,000 fans at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium, aged just 18, as the Hammers won promotion to the Premier League in 2005. In 2007, he helped inspire the famous ‘Great Escape’, and in 2012, he helped his Club win the Championship Play-Off final at Wembley.
Noble developed into a leader and a legend at West Ham, breaking the Club’s all-time Premier League appearance-record (414), is sixth in the Club’s all-time appearance list, and also ranks joint-third in the Club’s all-time Premier League goalscorer list with 47.
Noble is still involved at West Ham to this day, working as the Club’s Sporting Director in support of Head Coach Graham Potter, as well as working with the Board of Directors, providing input, advice and assistance across all aspects of the football operation.
