Okay, hands up everyone who feared Jermaine Defoe would get the winner for Sunderland on Saturday.
When he got in behind our back four after 15 minutes no one who had seen Defoe in his prime expected him to miss the way he did. However, he’s clearly not lost the greed that once made him a formidable striker and the way our luck has been going lately you had to be a serious optimist to be truly confident he wouldn’t nick one. I for one was relieved when he finally got the hook in the 88th minute.
It wasn’t until we were enjoying a celebratory pint in the Denmark after the game that I discovered my son Geoff had taken serious preventative action by actually backing Defoe to score – working on the tried and tested premise that any wager placed by a member of the Williams family is guaranteed to put the mockers on the predicted outcome. I’d like you all to join me now in thanking the fruit of my loins for his selfless action in the name of West Ham United.
Didn’t it make a welcome change to keep a clean sheet for once? I always feel as if a dagger has been plunged into my heart when the opposition puts the ball in our net. When the goalscorer is a former Iron the pain is worse. And if that ex-Hammer is a genuine turncoat it’s akin to being stabbed with a rusty breadknife.
I really don’t care for Jermaine Defoe. I know I should be grateful for the goals he scored on our behalf, not least the header that gave us a rare 1-0 win at Old Trafford win at the end of 2001.
However, the way he left us did lack a certain amount of class. Perhaps those three red cards he was shown after having his transfer request turned down were purely coincidental, but anyone with a suspicious nature could be forgiven for thinking there might have been something more to it than that. Was he trying to tell us something?
As a Tottenham player he developed quite a knack of scoring against us after he got his ticket out of E13 – including a goal in his first game back at Upton Park. This was the lasagne-gate game which, happily, we won 2-1.
You will recall that Tottenham complained bitterly because several of their players had been laid low by the pre-match catering. It would appear Mr Defoe went for the vegetarian option that day, because he was fit to play. However the following season, at White Hart Lane, he felt he was entitled to try some Argentinian beef and sunk his teeth into Javier Mascherano’s shoulder – much to the South American’s annoyance. As with the lasagne and his team-mates, Mascherano clearly didn’t agree with him.
Never mind Jermaine. Much as we dislike you, there is no chance of you being anything more than Public Enemy No 2 at Upton Park. Securing a transfer by being repeatedly sent off is bad enough. Being photographed in another club’s shirt in an effort to accelerate your exit takes treachery to a whole new level.
Paul Ince really got the treatment every time he returned to Upton Park – and I’m not ashamed to say I was one of those who took the chance to make my feelings known about the way he had behaved.
On each occasion we played Man Utd after he’d joined them I prayed that long-suffering West Ham supporters wouldn’t have to put up with the indignity of seeing him score. It worked for several years. Then what little faith I had in God’s infinite wisdom and mercy was finally shattered one chilly afternoon in February 1994 when, with us leading 2-1 with only three minutes left, the little Red Devil popped up and grabbed the equaliser. It is fair to say he did not receive a sporting round of applause from those of us in claret and blue.
Ince actually managed to score against us for three different clubs. After he left Man Utd he scored for Liverpool in May 1998, when he got their fifth as we took a 5-0 hiding at Anfield. And then in 2005 – 16 years after his controversial departure from East London – he got Wolves’ third as we endured a 4-2 mauling at Molineux. However, the good news on this occasion is that we had the last laugh – securing promotion through the play-offs as Mr Ince was left to languish in the second tier. Perhaps there is a god after all.
If we were handing out medals to former players who have scaled the heights of unpopularity with the West Ham faithful, you would certainly have to reserve a place on the rostrum for Frank Lampard Jnr.
I wasn’t looking forward to 2006 with much enthusiasm, knowing it would be the year I turned 50. And just when I thought I couldn’t feel any more miserable Lampard scored for Chelsea as they won 3-1 at Upton Park on January 2. A new year doesn’t get off to a worse start than that.
He scored several more against us after that, of course – marked either by kissing the Chelsea badge or a skyward dedication to his late lamented Mum. I shall keep my thoughts about his goal celebrations to myself.
In our first season back in the Prem after the play-off final against Blackpool we were particularly prone to conceding goals scored by ex-Hammers. Defoe got two at White Hart Lane; Joe Cole scored for Liverpool at Upton Park – and Glen Johnson got a screamer in the same game. Curiously, young Glen had the decency not to score against us for Chelsea, but after moving on to Anfield he clearly developed the taste for it – that effort was the third time he left a West Ham keeper grasping at thin air.
It really does seem that anyone who’s played for West Ham feels entitled to score when they play us. Like Defoe after him (and Sir Geoff Hurst previously), Rio Ferdinand scored on his first game back at the Boleyn – that was in 2001. Yossi Benayoun notched up one for Liverpool at Anfield in 2009. Even full-back Paul Konchesky got in the act when he let fly from outside territorial waters to score for Fulham at Upton Park a few months beforehand.
Some former Irons get a better reception than others, of course. I remember Tony Cottee scoring twice for Leicester at Upton Park towards in the late Nineties and getting the biggest cheer of the afternoon at the end of it all. True, we had won 4-3 and it was the last game of the season – but you have to be a proper East End legend to hit two and still get a standing ovation.
And then there’s Carlos Tevez. Oh, how we loved that man. He didn’t use his first game back at Upton Park as a Man Utd player as an excuse to score. Not Carlos. He crossed his arms to replicate the crossed hammers on our badge and turned to all four corners of the ground to show everyone he still had West Ham in his heart. Now that’s style.
He scored for both Manchester clubs against us, but always refused to celebrate. In fact he looked positively crestfallen. To be honest, if I had been his manager I’d have subbed him after those goals. You got the feeling that Tevez felt so bad about scoring against us that he must have thought seriously about demanding the ball from the kick-off, dribbling around his bemused team-mates and smashing it into his own net just to level things up. Unlike some, he understood what we have always known: once an Iron, always an Iron.