Blast from the past
Back in 1929/1930, West Ham United visited Leicester City while in the midst of a run of five wins in seven matches, scoring 23 goals in the process and conceding 11. The Hammers kept up their good form on the 20th February 1930 by beating the Foxes 2-1 at Filbert Street in front of 13,156. Ramsay MacDonald was Prime Minister, the existence of Pluto had just been confirmed and Elm Farm Ollie had just become the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft. The Technicolor musical film The Vagabond King had just been released, with English actor and singer Dennis King recreating his original London and Broadway stage role as Villon in the film and recording two songs from the film for Victor Records.
The Foxes had finished as First Division runners-up the previous season so victory at Filbert Street was no mean feat for the Hammers. The Irons’ goals that day came courtesy of the great Vic Watson and winger Jimmy Wood. Legendary centre-forward Watson (pictured above) would end the campaign as the Irons’ top goalscorer with an astounding 50 goals from 44 matches, more than the rest of his team-mates combined. Leicester’s consolation was scored by Scottish inside-left Arthur Lochhead, formerly of Hearts and Manchester United.
Syd King’s West Ham would end the season in seventh position, while Willie Orr’s Leicester would finish eighth. Sheffield Wednesday won the league title and Arsenal won the FA Cup.
Leicester City: Jim McLaren, Adam Black, Albert Harrison, Reg Osborne, Norman Watson, Ernie Hine, Hughie Adcock, Johnny Duncan, Arthur Chandler, Arthur Lochhead, Len Barry.
West Ham United: Bob Dixon, Alfred Earl, Bill Cox, Fred Norris, Viv Gibbins, Albert Cadwell, Tommy Yews, Stan Earle, Vic Watson, Johnny Ball, Jimmy Wood.
Club Connections
Players who have represented both the Hammers and the Foxes include:
Goalkeepers: George Hebden, Colin Mackleworth.
Defenders: Gary Charles, Chris Powell, Dickie Pudan, Rufus Brevett, Paul Konchesky, Dai Jones, Matthew Upson, Clive Clarke, Billy Oakes, Fred Milnes, John Paintsil.
Midfielders: Andy Impey, Shaun Newton, Nolberto Solano, Franz Carr, Sid Bishop.
Strikers: David Connolly, Albert Carnelly, Mike Newell, Brian Deane, Keith Robson, David Speedie, Bertie Lyon, Norman Proctor, Les Ferdinand, David Kelly, Tony Cottee, Jimmy Quinn.
Martin Allen, Frank O’Farrell and Jimmy Bloomfield have played for the Hammers and managed the Foxes.
This week’s focus though is on a player who started his career at Leicester before spending just over five years with the Hammers. Paul Kitson was born in Murton, County Durham on 9th January 1971 and started his career with the Foxes, where he won England Under-21 caps. After a loan spell at Rugby Town, he made his Leicester debut as a substitute in a 3-1 home defeat to West Brom on 9th September 1989 and was dubbed the new Gary Lineker having come through the Foxes’ youth set-up. He scored his first senior goal ten days later in a 2-1 win at Crystal Palace in a League Cup second round first leg match. He made 15 appearances in 1989/90 and played seven matches the following season. His next goal for the club was also in the League Cup, in a 3-0 first round first leg win over Maidstone at Filbert Street on 21st August 1991. It was the first of three goals in three games as he also notched in the 1-0 win at Maidstone in the second leg, with a strike in a 2-0 home win over Plymouth sandwiched in between. He was sent off in a 3-1 defeat at Barnsley the following month but scored again in a 3-0 home win over Blackburn. Six more goals followed before the end of February 1992, against Port Vale in the Members Cup and league matches against Brighton, Ipswich, Watford and Oxford, as well as an FA Cup fourth round defeat against Bristol City.
Having scored 11 goals in 62 appearances for Leicester, Kitson joined Derby in March 1992 for a club record £1.3m before moving to Newcastle in September 1994 for £2.25m. The arrivals of Les Ferdinand, Faustino Asprilla and Alan Shearer restricted Kitson’s gametime however and the 26-year-old striker agreed to move to Harry Redknapp’s struggling West Ham United in February 1997 for a fee of £2.3m, alongside fellow new striker signing John Hartson who arrived from Arsenal. The pair made their debuts in a 1-0 defeat at Kitson’s former club Derby on 15th February 1997 but quickly struck up a lethal partnership which would steer the Irons to Premier League survival. Both scored on their home debuts, a 4-3 win over Tottenham at Upton Park on 24th February 1997, while Kitson’s double against Chelsea on 12th March included an injury-time winner in a 3-2 home victory. Another brace followed on 19th April, this time against Everton – the Hammers were 2-0 up but a missed penalty by Kitson, who had been handed the ball by Hartson to complete his hat-trick, gave the Toffees the impetus to come back and claim a point in a 2-2 draw. The crowning glory came on 3rd May when a Kitson hat-trick and Hartson double downed Sheffield Wednesday 5-1 to all but secure the Hammers’ safety.
Kitson scored his first Hammers goal away from Upton Park in a 1-1 draw at Coventry on 27th August 1997 but an injury picked up in mid-September would keep him out for three months. The Hammers left their relegation worries of the previous season behind them to finish eighth in 1997/98 but Kitson would make only 17 appearances. He scored three goals in four games on his return in December, all of them winners in a 1-0 victory over Sheffield Wednesday, 1-0 win over Coventry on Boxing Day and 2-1 triumph at Wimbledon. He was also on the scoresheet in a 2-2 FA Cup fifth round home draw with Blackburn on 14th February 1998.
A similar story followed in 1998/99, with Kitson again making 17 appearances and scoring three goals as the Irons finished fifth – he scored in a 3-2 home win over former club Leicester on 14th November 1998, notched the winner at Stamford Bridge in a 1-0 Hammers victory on 13th March 1999 and scored the second in a 2-0 win over another former club, Newcastle, the following week. Kitson scored the first West Ham goal of 1999/2000 in a 1-0 home win over Finnish side Jokerit in the first leg of the InterToto Cup third round on 17th July 1999. The Hammers won the competition and Kitson’s next goal would come in the UEFA Cup, in a 3-1 first round second leg win in Croatia against Osijek on 30th September. He also came off the bench to score a late equaliser at Birmingham in the League Cup fourth round on 30th November, the Hammers going on to win 3-2. Kitson would spend a period on loan at First Division Charlton later in the season.
Another loan spell followed in the first half of 2000/01, this time at Crystal Palace. With Glenn Roeder taking over from Redknapp at the end of that season, Kitson found himself with a renewed opportunity at West Ham and made his first start in claret and blue for 21 months at Charlton on 19th November 2001. Almost two years on from his previous goal for the club, Kitson astonishingly bagged a hat-trick at The Valley in a topsy-turvy 4-4 draw – he remains the only player to have scored two Premier League hat-tricks for West Ham. He made four more starts in 2001/02 but was released at the end of his contract in the summer. Kitson had scored 22 goals in 81 appearances in his five years at the club – all 22 of these goals can be viewed in my video below.
The 31-year-old Kitson spent a season at First Division Brighton after joining on a free transfer before moving to Second Division Rushden and Diamonds for the 2003/04 campaign, scoring five goals in 28 matches. He ended his career at Aldershot the following year. Now 47 and living in Stockton-on-Tees, Kitson was declared bankrupt in 2017 after at least two businesses failed. Less than two weeks ago he was accused of spending £25,000 on gambling rather than paying off debts – the Insolvency Service has ruled that he must not take control of a firm for four years after “disposing of £25,901 to the detriment of his creditors”, adding “he used the funds to gamble with”. KItson denied losing the money in bets, saying:
“The problem began in 1999 when I and lots of footballers fell victim to bad financial advice. At the time the HMRC had no objection to the tax avoidance scheme we had signed up to but they changed the rules and we lost a lot of money. These tax schemes were complicated so you trusted the advice you were given but it turned out to be a very bad move.”
Referee
The referee on Saturday will be Christopher Kavanagh. The Manchester-born official has refereed the Hammers once before, issuing Arthur Masuaku with a red card for spitting in January’s FA Cup fourth round defeat at Wigan. Kavanagh has been the man in the middle for 28 matches in total so far in 2017/18 (14 in the Premier League), issuing 93 yellow cards and four red cards, and awarding four penalties, one of which was converted by Will Grigg in the aforementioned match at the DW Stadium.
Possible line-ups
Leicester City boss Claude Puel will be without the injured Kasper Schmeichel, Vicente Iborra, Wilfred Ndidi, Matty James, Shinji Okazaki and the suspended Marc Albrighton. The Foxes are unbeaten in their last seven matches against the Hammers in all competitions, while West Ham have not recorded a Premier League win away at Leicester since January 2000.
For West Ham United, Sam Byram, James Collins, Winston Reid, Pedro Obiang and Michail Antonio are out injured. West Ham have only won two of their last 18 Premier League away games, the same number of away games they won when relegated in bottom place in 2010/11 and three less than when relegated in 2002/03.
Possible Leicester City XI: Hamer; Simpson, Morgan, Maguire, Chilwell; Choudhury, Silva; Mahrez, Iheanacho, Gray; Vardy.
Possible West Ham United XI: Hart; Zabaleta, Rice, Ogbonna, Cresswell, Masuaku; Kouyate, Noble, Mario; Lanzini, Arnautovic.
Enjoy the game – Come On You Irons!