West Ham Till I Die
Comments
Dan Coker's Match Preview

Match Preview: Southampton v West Ham

Blast from the past

1st April 1907 – Edward VII was on the throne, Henry Campbell-Bannerman was the Liberal Prime Minister and the first taxicabs with taximeters had just begun operating in London. West Ham United, meanwhile, were defeating Southampton 3-2 in front of 8,000 at The Dell.

The Hammers recorded victory on the South Coast with goals from 23-year-old centre-forward Harry Stapley, 22-year-old half-back Len Jarvis and 25-year-old inside-forward Lionel Watson. Trialist John Patten and 22-year-old Frank Jefferis replied for the Saints but it was the Hammers who took maximum points back to London. This was one of two goals Patten scored for Saints from four matches but it still wasn’t enough to win him a permanent contract. Jefferis would go on to win two England caps and the 1915 league title with Everton.

Stapley (pictured right) was born in Tunbridge Wells on 29th April 1883 and was considered something of a coup when, as an amateur player, he accepted an invitation to play for the Hammers in late 1904. A schoolmaster by trade, he had resisted the lure of professional football throughout a distinguished football career with Manor Park Albion, Bromley, Norwich CEYMS, Reading and Woodford Town. Slightly-built for a centre-forward, he topped West Ham’s scoring charts for three consecutive campaigns and, after then moving up in the world to join Second Division Glossop, he was the Derbyshire club’s top scorer for seven successive seasons. His duties as a teacher prevented him from travelling to midweek matches but he became the private tutor and cricket and football coach to the Hill-Wood children (the family long associated with Arsenal); Stapley served as private secretary to Sir Samuel Hill-Wood when he became MP for High Peak. Harry Stapley died in Glossop on his 56th birthday in 1939.

West Ham United would finish the 1906/07 Southern League First Division season in fifth position, while Southampton would end up 11th in a campaign which saw Fulham top the division, Newcastle win the Football League title and The Wednesday win the FA Cup. Stapley would finish as the Hammers’ top scorer with 22 goals in 37 matches.

Southampton: George Clawley, John Robertson, John Eastham, Horace Glover, Joseph Harris, James Bowden, Sam Jepp, Fred Mouncher, Frank Jefferis, John Patten, Wally Radford.

West Ham United: George Kitchen, Bill Wildman, Bill Taylor, Tommy Allison, Len Jarvis, Frank Piercy, Dave Lindsay, Billy Grassam, Harry Stapley, Lionel Watson, Fred Blackburn.

Club Connections

Jose Fonte and Michail Antonio travel to the home of their former club. An array of West Ham United’s good, bad and ugly have also turned out for Southampton:

Goalkeepers: Richard Wright, George Kitchen.

Defenders: Richard Hall, Christian Dailly, Joe Kirkup, Wayne Bridge, Neil Ruddock, Bill Adams, Ian Pearce, Darren Powell, Albie Roles, Horace Glover, Calum Davenport.

Midfielders: Jimmy Carr, Bobby Weale, Luis Boa Morte, Nigel Quashie, Eyal Berkovic, Robbie Slater, Peter Cowper, Paul Allen.

Strikers: Vic Watson, Justin Fashanu, David Speedie, David Connolly, Ted MacDougall, Henri Camara, Alex McDonald, Frank Costello, Fred Harrison, Walter Pollard, Arthur Wilson, Jimmy Harris, Jack Foster.

In addition, George Kay played for the Hammers and managed the Saints while Harry Redknapp and Alan Pardew have managed both clubs.

Today’s focus is on a striker who had a period with Southampton in between two spells with West Ham. Iain Dowie was born in Hatfield, Hertfordshire on 9th January 1965. He was rejected by Southampton aged 16 and later went to the University of Hertfordshire to study for an engineer’s degree. On completion he became an employee of British Aerospace, whilst playing football at non-League level for Cheshunt alongside his brother Bob. He left Cheshunt to improve his fitness and signed for St Albans City, then moved on to Hendon. While playing for Hendon, Dowie was spotted by Luton who signed him in the 1988/89 season, when they were in the First Division. An old-fashioned centre-forward, he had a brief loan spell at Fulham before establishing himself as a first-team player at Kenilworth Road in the 1989/90 season, when his eight goals in 29 league games helped Luton finish seventh.

On 22nd March 1991, with Luton still in the First Division and Dowie still a first team regular with seven goals from 29 games that season, he agreed to drop a division to join Billy Bonds’ promotion-chasing West Ham United for a fee of £480,000. He proved himself to be a competent deputy for the injured Trevor Morley as his four goals in the final 12 league games of the season helped secure the team’s promotion as Second Division runners-up. The 26-year-old Dowie made his Hammers debut in a 0-0 draw at Hull the day after signing and scored his first goal on his home debut, a 3-2 win over Barnsley at the Boleyn Ground on 1st April 1991. He scored in his next two home games as well, a 2-0 win over Swindon on 20th April and a 1-1 draw with Newcastle four days later, before making it three goals in a week in a 3-1 defeat at Blackburn on 27th April. When the 1991/92 First Division season began however, Morley had returned to fitness and Dowie found himself on the sidelines until his £500,000 move to Southampton on 3rd September 1991 after less than six months at Upton Park.

Embed from Getty Images

Dowie played alongside Alan Shearer and Matthew Le Tissier – two of the country’s highest regarded players in the early 1990s – and scored nine goals in 30 league games to ensure that Ian Branfoot’s Saints finished high enough for a place in the newly formed Premier League, while the Hammers were relegated in bottom position from the old First Division to the new First Division. His good form continued into the 1992/93 season, despite the sale of Shearer to Blackburn, as he scored 11 league goals. His tally dropped to five goals in 39 games during the 1993/94 campaign, though Southampton avoided relegation again, and he managed another five goals from 17 league games in the 1994/95 season before manager Alan Ball decided that he wanted younger partners for Le Tissier in attack, signing Gordon Watson and Neil Shipperley while dropping Craig Maskell and selling Dowie to Crystal Palace for £400,000 in January 1995. Dowie had scored 30 goals for Southampton from 122 matches in just over three years at The Dell.

Embed from Getty Images

Dowie could not save the Eagles from relegation from the Premier League and returned to Upton Park in September 1995 in a deal which saw the late Jeroen Boere move to Selhurst Park. The 30-year-old Dowie made his second Hammers debut under Harry Redknapp in a 3-1 home defeat to Chelsea on 11th September 1995 and scored his first goal back at the Boleyn in a 1-1 draw with champions Blackburn on 21st October. He scored the only goal of the game at Sheffield Wednesday the following weekend before grabbing a late winner against former club Southampton on 16th December. He bagged the Hammers’ first goal of 1996 in a 2-1 New Year’s Day defeat at Manchester City and notched an 85th-minute winner in a 3-2 home win over Coventry on 31st January 1996, a match which saw the debut of Frank Lampard Junior.

Dowie scored the equaliser in a 1-1 home FA Cup fourth round draw with Grimsby on 7th February 1996 but the Hammers would lose the replay 3-0 the following week. He tapped in the opener in a 2-0 home win over Middlesbrough on 9th March and made it three goals in as many games by bagging a brace in a 4-2 home triumph over Manchester City. Dowie ended the 1995/96 campaign with nine goals from 39 appearances in all competitions and was voted runner-up to Julian Dicks in the Hammer of the Year voting as West Ham finished in the top flight’s top ten for the first time since the famous 1985/86 season.

Embed from Getty Images

1996/97 was to prove less fruitful, with Dowie’s only goals coming in a Hugo Porfirio-inspired 4-1 victory over Nottingham Forest in the third round of the League Cup, a match in which Dowie notched a double on 23rd October 1996. Redknapp had broken up Dowie’s previously successful partnership with Tony Cottee (who had moved to Selangor of Malaysia) but his experiment with foreign imports was not paying dividends – neither Florin Raducioiu nor Paulo Futre, both summer signings, would be in east London by the end of the winter. Dowie ploughed a fruitless furrow up front in the bleak winter of 1996/97 and had to bear the frustrations of supporters who also had to contend with loan flop Mike Newell when Dowie was injured in January before the signings of John Hartson and Paul Kitson breathed new goalscoring life into the claret and blue strikeforce. Dowie’s nightmare own goal at lowly Stockport also dumped the drenched Hammers out of the League Cup in a fourth round replay.

Dowie remained in east London until January 1998, fourteen months and 32 matches after his last goals for the club. He departed, alongside left-back and fellow Northern Ireland international Keith Rowland, in the deal which brought Trevor Sinclair to the Boleyn Ground from QPR. Dowie, who left at the age of 33, had scored 15 goals in 95 appearances in all competitions across both his spells with West Ham United. Twelve of these goals can be seen in my video below.

Dowie spent three years at QPR, ending his career playing in defence and as player-manager of the reserves. He was also caretaker manager of the club for two games in the autumn of 1998. He retired having also won 59 caps for Northern Ireland, for whom he qualified to play through his father, scoring 12 goals. He became manager of Oldham in 2002, knocking Glenn Roeder’s West Ham out of the League Cup at Upton Park, before moving to former club Crystal Palace in December 2003, taking the Eagles from 19th place in Division One to the Play-Off Final, where Dowie again engineered a victory over the Hammers. He took over at Charlton in the summer of 2006 but left before Christmas and became manager at Coventry in February 2007 only to leave a year later. He returned to QPR in the summer of 2008 but was sacked after just 15 games. Alan Shearer named Dowie on his coaching staff at Newcastle when he took over for the final stages of the 2008/09 campaign.

Dowie was named as the temporary ‘Football Management Consultant’ of Premier League Hull City on 17th March 2010 but the Tigers would be relegated with one game left to play. Now 52, Dowie works as a commentator for Sky Sports News. His niece, 29-year-old England international striker Natasha Dowie, plays for Boston Breakers in the American National Women’s Soccer League.

Referee

Saturday’s referee will be Lee Mason from Greater Manchester. Mason refereed the Hammers once in 2016/17 – the 1-0 home win over Hull when he awarded the Hammers a match-winning penalty – but took charge of two West Ham matches the previous season, those being the 0-0 draw at Swansea in December 2015 and the 3-0 win at West Brom in April 2016.

Embed from Getty Images

Mason refereed three Premier League matches involving the Hammers in 2014/15 – the 1-0 defeat at Aston Villa, the 1-0 home win over Sunderland and the 2-1 defeat at Old Trafford when he sent off Wayne Rooney, denied the Hammers a penalty when Morgan Amalfitano’s cross struck Radamel Falcao’s arm and disallowed Kevin Nolan’s last-minute strike for a marginal offside. Mason was also the man in the middle for our 1-0 FA Cup win at Bristol City in January 2015. He also officiated in four of our games in 2013/14, sending off two of our players (Mark Noble against Everton and James Tomkins at Cardiff) and disallowing a perfectly good Stewart Downing equaliser at Crystal Palace.

Possible line-ups

Southampton and England left-back Ryan Bertrand has been passed fit but Virgil van Dijk remains unavailable.

West Ham United could welcome back Michail Antonio from injury, while Aaron Cresswell could claim a starting berth. Cheikhou Kouyate, Manuel Lanzini and Andy Carroll could return at Newcastle next weekend.

Possible Southampton XI: Forster; Soares, Stephens, Yoshida, Bertrand; Romeu, Ward-Prowse; Redmond, Davis, Tadic; Gabbiadini.

Possible West Ham United XI: Hart; Zabaleta, Reid, Ogbonna, Cresswell; Obiang, Noble; Antonio, Ayew, Arnautovic; Chicharito.

Enjoy the game – Up The Hammers!

Follow @dan_coker on twitter.

About us

West Ham Till I Die is a website and blog designed for supporters of West Ham United to discuss the club, its fortunes and prospects. It is operated and hosted by West Ham season ticket holder, LBC radio presenter and political commentator Iain Dale.

More info

Follow us

Contact us

Iain Dale, WHTID, PO Box 663, Tunbridge Wells, TN9 9RZ

Visit iaindale.com, Iain Dale’s personal website & blog.

Get in touch

Copyright © 2024 Iain Dale Limited.