West Ham United F.C.
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| Full name | West Ham United Football Club | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nickname(s) | The Irons, The Hammers, The Academy of Football |
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| Founded | 1895 as Thames Ironworks F.C. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ground | Boleyn Ground Upton Park Newham London England |
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| Capacity | 35,647 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chairman |  Eggert Magnússon |
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| Manager |  Alan Curbishley |
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| League | FA Premier League | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2005-06 | Premier League, 9th | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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West Ham United Football Club are a football club based in Upton Park, Newham, East London and play their home matches at The Boleyn Ground or formally known as Upton Park. They are currently in the English Premier League, but reside in one of the three relegation positions in the league table. The club's current manager is Alan Curbishley, who was appointed on 13 December 2006 after the firing of Alan Pardew. The current Chairman of the club is the Icelandic businessman, Eggert Magnússon.
The club was founded in 1895, and, since joining the Football League, have never been below The Championship. They have won the FA Cup three times: in 1964, 1975 and 1980, and also captured the now defunct Cup Winners Cup in 1965 and the Intertoto Cup in 1999. Their best finish in the top-flight was a 3rd place finish in 1986.
The club returned to the Premier League in 2005 and achieved a 9th place finish. In addition, the club progressed through to the FA Cup Final for the first time in twenty-six years where they lost on penalties to Liverpool after a 3-3 draw.
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[edit] History
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The earliest generally accepted incarnation of West Ham United were founded in 1897 as Thames Ironworks F.C.. They turned professional in 1898 upon entering the Southern League Second Division. In June 1900, Thames Ironworks FC was dissolved, but were reformed on 5 July 1900 as West Ham United FC with Syd King as their manager. Because of these roots, they are still known as 'the Irons' or 'the Hammers' amongst fans.
In 1919, West Ham gained entrance to the Football League Second Division, still under King's leadership, and were quickly promoted to Division One. However, in 1932, the club was relegated to Division Two once again, and King was sacked, replaced with his assistant manager Charlie Paynter. The club spent most of the next 30 years in this league, under Paynter and then Ted Fenton. Fenton succeeded in getting the club once again promoted to the top level of English football in 1958.
Ron Greenwood was appointed as Fenton's successor in 1961. He led the club to an FA Cup win in 1964. The next year, in 1965, West Ham won the European Cup Winners' Cup. During the 1966 World Cup, an important part of the England national football team was composed of West Ham players, including the captain, Bobby Moore, and Geoff Hurst, who scored the only ever hat-trick to-date in a World Cup final. Greenwood again led West Ham to win the FA Cup in 1975, before being apptointed the England manager.
Greenwood's successor was named as John Lyall. He guided West Ham to a UEFA Cup Winners' Cup final in 1976, though the team lost the match. In 1978, the club were again relegated to Division Two; Lyall was still able to lead West Ham to another FA Cup win in 1980. No team since has won the trophy from outside the top division. They were promoted to Division One in 1981, having spent only 3 years in the lower league, although they were relegated after 8 seasons in 1989. In this stay in Division One, West Ham achieved their highest ever placing in the top division in 1986, finishing 3rd. This relegation caused Lyall's sacking.
Very briefly, they were led by Lou Macari, though he resigned after less than a single season. Billy Bonds was the next West ham manager. In his first full season, 1990-91, West Ham again secured promotion to Division One. The following season, 1991-92, they were relegated, ironically to Division One, missing out on the newly formed Premier league. West Ham again only spent one year in Division One, before finishing 2nd and gaining promotion to the Premier League in May 1993.
After a more stable season in the Premier League, Bonds quit, and was replaced by Harry Redknapp in August 1994. Redknapp was active in the transfer market, and gained a reputation as a "wheeler-dealer" especially with foreign players being more available following the Bosman ruling. He led West Ham to 5th place in 1998/99 but they missed out on automatic qualification for the UEFA Cup (despite seasons prior to and since where 5th was good enough), but did indeed qualify for that competition as winners of the Intertoto Cup. Despite consolidating the league placings for a handful of seasons, a disagreement with the board of directors during the close of the 2000-01 season, found Redknapp replaced with Glenn Roeder, promoted from Youth team coach.
In Roeder's first season the team finished 7th (an improvement on Redknapp's last finish of 15th.), but there were worrying signs as West Ham lost 7-1 to Blackburn and 5-0 and 5-1 to Everton and Chelsea respectively. West Ham were relegated in 2002-03. Following ill-health and poor results, Roeder was sacked in August 2004, and replaced with Alan Pardew in October 2004. Pardew led the team to a playoff final, though they were beaten by Crystal Palace, and stayed in Division One for another season, when they again reached the playoff final, but this time won, gaining re-entry to the Premiership.
On their return to the Premiership, West Ham finished in a solid 9th place, restoring pride to many West Ham supporters. The highlight of the 2005-06 season, however, was reaching the FA Cup final, and taking Liverpool FC to a penalty shootout.
At the beginning of the next season West Ham were knocked out from UEFA Cup by Italian Serie A side Palermo (0-1 and 0-3). An Icelandic consortium, led by Eggert Magnússon, bought the club on 26 November 2006, and following a poor run of form leaving the club in 17th position (despite the signing of talented players like Javier Mascherano and Carlos Tévez), sacked Pardew, replacing him with former West Ham player Alan Curbishley. Curbishley has not been able to turn around the Hammers fortunes, despite a 1-0 victory over league leaders Manchester United in his first match in charge.
[edit] Club crest and colours
The original club crest was a crossed pair of rivet hammers, tools that were commonly used in the iron and shipbuilding industries. A castle was added to the crest in around 1900 and represents a prominent local building, Green Street House, which was known as "Boleyn Castle" through an association with Anne Boleyn. The castle may have also been added as a result of the contribution made to the club by players of Old Castle Swifts. The crest was redesigned and updated by London design agency Springett Associates in the late 1990s, featuring a wider yellow castle with fewer cruciform "windows" and differently shaped hammer heads.
The original colours of the team were dark blue due to Thames Iron Works chairman Arnold Hills being a former student of Oxford University, although the team used a variety of kits. This would include the claret and sky blue house colours of Thames Iron Works, as well as sky blue or white uniforms. The Irons permanently adopted claret and blue for home colours in the summer of 1899. Thames Ironworks right-half Charlie Dove received the kit from his father William Dove, who was a professional sprinter of national repute, as well as being involved with the coaching at Thames Ironworks. Bill Dove had been at a fair in Birmingham, close to Villa Park, the home ground of Aston Villa and was challenged to a race against four Villa players, who wagered money that one of them would win. Bill Dove defeated them, and when they were unable to pay the bet, one of the Villa players who was responsible for washing the team's kit offered a complete side's 'uniforms' to Dove in payment of the bet. The Aston Villa player subsequently reported to his club that the kit was 'missing'. Thames Ironworks, and later West Ham United, would retain the claret yoke/blue sleeves design, but would also continue to use their previously favoured colours for their away kits, and indeed, in recent years the club have committed to a dark blue-white-sky blue rotation for the away colours, each kit having a one season shelf life.
On March 2, 2007, West Ham announced a new kit supplier will be UMBRO for the next 3 seasons.[1]
[edit] Supporters, rivalries, and hooliganism
The team's supporters are famed for their rendition of the chorus of their team's anthem, I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles, the lyrics are as follows:
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I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air |
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There is a slight change to the lyrics sung by the Upton Park faithful. The second line's nearly reach the sky is changed to they reach the sky by the crowd. Then like my dreams is also changed to And like my dreams. The 1980 FA Cup version - which contains the original lyrics - is always played before home games, with the home crowd joining in and carrying the song on after the music stops at the verse "Fortune's always hiding". The song was originally released as a single by the Cockney Rejects in 1980.
West Ham have strong rivalries with several other clubs. Most of these are with other London clubs, especially with their neighbours Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal and also with Chelsea, which sublimates the age-old East versus West London rivalry. However, the strongest and oldest rivalry is with Millwall, despite the fact Millwall are normally one or two divisions lower than West Ham. One bizarre story has it that this rivalry began before either club was formed, in the days when the Thames Iron Works and Millwall Iron Works shipbuilding companies were rivals for the same contracts. So the tale goes, this rivalry was fuelled when the workers for the ship building company based in the East End (i.e. West Ham fans) went on strike, and those working in the south London based company (i.e. Millwall fans) refused to support the strike and carried on working. There is no evidence to support this fable - Millwall is and always has been a large district right in the heart of East London and the football club did not even move to south London until 1910. The truth is that, similar to other local rivalries, supporters of both teams can be found living in the same streets and often within the same families. Millwall however can claim to be the original East End side having been formed in 1885 on the Isle Of Dogs some ten years before the Hammers came into being. The rivalry between West Ham and Millwall is clearly illustrated in the film Green Street.
During the 1970s and 1980s (the main era for organised football-related violence) the hostilities continued as "firms" associated with the clubs continued to fight. West Ham gained some notoriety for the amount of hooliganism in their fan base; and for being supported by the most feared and dangerous firms alongside those for Chelsea and Millwall. The Inter City Firm was an infamous West Ham-aligned gang. As that firm's name suggests, the firms' violent activities were not confined to local derbies - the hooligans were content to cause trouble at any game, though nearby teams bore the brunt of their venom. During the 1990s, and to the present day, sophisticated surveillance and heavy policing has reduced the level of violence, though the intense rivalry with Millwall remains. The bitterness remains as in there previous meeting Millwall won 4-1. The 2005 film Green Street depicts an American student who becomes involved with a fictional firm associated with West Ham, with an emphasis on the rivalry with Millwall.
[edit] Nicknames
They are also known as "The Hammers" by the media, because of the club's origins as Thames Ironworks company football team (see club crest). However, they are also known as "The Irons" by their own supporters (again, from the club's origins at the Thames Ironworks). They are also known as "The Cockney Boys" from their history of being a cockney team.
[edit] Stadium
- See also: Boleyn Ground
West Ham are currently based at the Boleyn Ground, commonly known as Upton Park, in Newham, East London. The capacity of the Boleyn Ground is 35,567. This has been West Ham's ground since 1904. Prior to this, in their previous incarnation of Thames Ironworks F.C., they played at Hermit Road in Canning Town and briefly at Browning Road in East Ham, before moving to the Memorial Grounds in Plaistow in 1897. They retained the stadium during their transition to becoming West Ham United and were there for a further four seasons before moving to the Boleyn Ground in 1904.
Current chairman Eggert Magnússon made clear his ambition for West Ham United to move to the Olympic Stadium after the 2012 Olympics. However, the move to the Olympic Stadium was abandoned when it was revealed that the stadium would have a reduced capacity from the current Boleyn Ground, and would have to remain primarily an athletics venue. [1].
As the move is no longer possible, Magnússon is eager to find another venue, and insists West Ham will preferably move from the Boleyn Ground in the future. [2]
[edit] The Academy of Football
The club promotes the popular idea of West Ham being "The Academy of Football", with the monicker adorning the ground's new stadium façade. The comment predominantly refers to the club's youth development system that has seen a number of international players emerge through the ranks. [3] Most notably the club contributed three players to the World Cup winning England side of 1966 including club icon Bobby Moore, as well as Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst who between them scored all of England's goals in the eventual 4-2 victory. Other academy players that have gone on to play for England have included Trevor Brooking, Alvin Martin, Tony Cottee and Paul Ince. More recently, Rio Ferdinand, Joe Cole, Michael Carrick and Frank Lampard have begun their careers at the club. Frustratingly, for the fans and managers alike,[4] the club has struggled to retain many of these players due to (predominantly) financial[5] reasons.
[edit] Players
[edit] Current squad
[edit] Out on loan
[edit] Hammer of the Year (1958–2006)
[edit] Official dream teamIn the 2003 book The Official West Ham United Dream Team, 500 fans were quizzed for who would be in their all time Hammers Eleven. The voting was restricted to players from the modern era.
[edit] Player records
[edit] Management
[edit] OwnershipWest Ham were owned by Terry Brown, until 2006, when Eggert Magnusson and an associated consortium bought the club subsequently sacked Alan Pardew employing ex-Charlton Athletic Manager Alan Curbishley. In a bizarre twist of fates the two managers met each other in a relgation battle wherby the Hammers lost 4-0 to their South East London rivals "the Addicks". Terry Brown was criticised by some sections of the fans (including pressure group Whistle specifically formed for this purpose) due to a perception of financial and staff mis-management. [edit] Managerial historyWest Ham have had only eleven managers in their history, fewer than any other major English club. Up until 1989 the club had only had five different managers. The club have never had an overseas manager, with the only non-Englishman being Lou Macari, who is Scottish.
[edit] HonoursEuropean
Domestic
Youth
War years
As Thames Ironworks F.C.
Other [edit] Statistics and records[edit] Attendance
[edit] Transfers
[edit] Victories
[edit] Goals
[edit] Premiership recordWest Ham were members of the Premier League from 1993-2003, but dropped into the First Division due to relegation. The club returned to the top flight in 2005. Their best-ever top flight finish is 3rd, in the 1985-1986 season. Notably, the club have never managed a positive goal difference at the end of a Premier League season.
[edit] League status since formation
See also West Ham United F.C. by season [edit] References[edit] Books
[edit] Websites
[edit] External linksOfficial
Unofficial
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