Sid Lambert takes us back 20 years to the 2004/05 season, when Alan Pardew’s Hammers secured a rollercoaster return to the Premier League...
With six games of the Championship campaign left there was a renewed sense of optimism around Upton Park. We’d spent the previous seven months scratching around for any semblance of form – and finally we’d found it.
Seven points from three games meant we were within touching distance of the final Play-Off spot. We needed to keep the pressure up. What you want at this stage of the season is a game against teams with nothing to play for. A team that’s planning their post-season trip to Benidorm and treats football matches with all the urgency of a sloth playing solitaire.
Unfortunately, the fixture calendar had matched us against Coventry City, former mainstays of the top-flight, now battling to stop sliding into English football’s third tier. In some ways, the Sky Blues’ struggles mirrored my own darkest fears about West Ham United. My early years supporting the Club had featured constant relegation fights. But back then the gap between the top-flight and other divisions was nowhere near as cavernous as it was now. You could bounce back from relegation (as we did on two occasions during the early 90s) and still be competitive.
Since then, Premier League broadcast money had changed the landscape completely. If you got stuck in the Championship too long, with a bloated budget, the financial consequences could be disastrous. Coventry, Nottingham Forest, and Leeds United were examples of that. Teams that were there for the razzmatazz of the Premier League’s inaugural season, now circling the drain of dropping into the lower leagues.
We had to get out of this division.
Every time I’d said that this season, we’d followed up with a poor performance. And for 45 minutes of desperate association football, that trend continued. In fairness to Coventry, they defended their penalty area determinedly and we simply lacked the artistry to pierce their rearguard.
The best thing about Alan Pardew, and coincidentally the worst thing about Alan Pardew, was his willingness to rip up a game plan in an instant. Trying to predict his line-up and formation from week to week was like to trying to predict a wasp’s flight path. Often the players seemed as confused as the spectators by the chaos unfolding around them. Poor Hayden Mullins, some weeks he didn’t know whether he was supposed to patrol centre midfield, put in a shift at right-back, or serve hotdogs in the West Stand.
Thankfully, on this occasion, Pards’ tinkering worked a treat. The introduction of Matty Etherington at half-time gave us the threat we needed. A trademark burst down the left, and a dangerous cross into enemy territory, produced an own-goal from Richard Shaw. The relief around the ground was palpable.
Then Etherington was tripped for a penalty that was subsequently dispatched by Teddy Sheringham. And from the restart Coventry squandered possession, West Ham’s livewire left winger galloped down the flank before delivering a pinpoint cross for Bobby Zamora to seal the win in style.
Wins for Derby and Reading meant we were still outside the Play-Off spots by the time our good friends from Millwall made the journey across the river. Former Chelsea midfielder Dennis Wise’s appearance in the opposition dugout added an extra edge to a raucous pre-match atmosphere.
We were briefly silenced by an early Barry Hayles finish, before Marlon Harewood scuffed in a first-half equaliser. It was frantic stuff. A constant clash of elbows and eye sockets, studs and shin pads. Johan Cruyff would have wept tears of despair as the beautiful game disintegrated before his eyes, but it was exactly the sort of full-blooded entertainment you hoped for from this fixture. All we needed was a winner. Harewood’s overhead kick forced a fine save from the Lions keeper, whilst Zamora and Sheringham went close in the dying moments.
A point meant that honours were even, but the news from elsewhere wasn’t good. Derby and Reading had won again. We were now four points behind the Royals with a game in hand. That was a trip to Stoke in three days’ time.
Anything other than a win there and our promotion dreams were done and dusted.
Games like this can often throw up unlikely heroes. Ours came in the shape of young Eliott Ward. The central defender was making only his ninth appearance in club colours, and his introduction into the side had coincided with our best spell of the season. He didn’t look like the archetypal Championship centre-half. His long hair and perma-tan made you wonder if he was moonlighting as a Chippendale. But there was nothing pretentious about his performance at Stoke. Ward was a colossus. A one-man wall blocking all in his path.
In truth, we were out-hustled and out-muscled by the home side for long spells. Yet Ward would not be beaten. Unfortunately, his monumental efforts would be in vain if we couldn’t find a winner at the other end.
Step forward Zamora. Pards sent him on from the bench hoping the big man could conjure up a winner in the 15 minutes remaining.
He only needed three. Marlon played a dangerous ball across the six-yard box and the supersub was there to tap it in. Cue delirium in the away end. These are the moments you live for. The reasons you travel 170-plus miles on a Tuesday night. A scrappy late winner, in a game you scarcely deserved to win, makes it all worthwhile.
The celebrations after the final whistle were long and loud. We were one point off Reading and unbeaten in seven games. Most importantly, we were grinding out results when we needed them most.
The belief that had been lacking all season was finally there. The next three games would determine our Premier League destiny.
*The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of West Ham United.
