FIVE Hammers West Ham Fans Love To Hate

Love is in the air this Valentine’s Day, but that won’t prevent the West Ham faithful from continuing to hate the players who have wronged them, be they past or present. While others exchange flowers and chocolates and kisses, we consider who the Hammers love to hate.

 

 

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Frank Lampard Junior

 

“You fat b*stard! You fat b*stard!”

 

That is, of course, the tongue-in-cheek chant West Ham’s followers often use against the younger Lampard.

 

Straightaway, it was almost impossible for him to ever win over the West Ham fans. This was because many of them believed he had not earned his place in the team like other players, but was only there because his Dad, Frank Lampard Senior, was assistant manager and his uncle, Harry Redknapp, was manager.

 

Lampard Snr and Redknapp were regarded as heroes by nearly everyone associated with the Hammers when Lampard Jnr broke into the first team as a 22-year-old. So, from the word go the young lad had to play in his father’s shadow.

 

But, despite accusations of nepotism, it was obvious early on that the now 34-year-old England international was a very talented footballer. He showed from a young age that he could pass the ball and had a wicked shot on him too.

 

Lampard was never shy of finding the net either. At his peak for West Ham he managed to bag 14 goals for the Hammers in all competitions in the 1999/2000 season, including four in Europe – an impressive total for a central-midfielder.

 

When West Ham’s love affair with Redknapp ended with his sacking in May 2001, both Lampards promptly followed him out the Boleyn Ground exit. Lampard Jnr insisted that he would not play for the club that had dismissed his father and uncle.

 

West Ham had no choice but to cash in and, despite receiving other offers, the Hammers chose to sell Lampard to rivals Chelsea for £11m.

 

What has made Lampard’s move across London all the more frustrating for West Ham, though, is how the player has excelled since his switch from east to west in the capital.

 

Lampard has become a superb player with a prolific goalscoring record in the Premier League – and many of those goals have come against West Ham too.

 

But, no matter what he achieves and how highly he is regarded by the rest of the footballing world, he will always (perhaps harshly) be Fat Frank to West Ham fans.

 

 

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Paul Ince

 

On 19 May 2012, Thomas Ince of Blackpool was preparing for the Championship Play-Off final against West Ham knowing that he would be abused all game because of how his rivals remember his name.

 

He was not wrong. Whenever he touched the ball, boos rang out around Wembley from the West Ham fans.

 

They were not aimed at Paul Ince though, at least not directly. No, this time it was his son Tom, the Blackpool winger, who bore the brunt of the Irons’ animosity.

 

Such is the level of hatred that the Hammers reserve for Paul Ince; that his son has to be ready to suffer for his father’s sins too.

 

The elder Ince – the self-proclaimed ‘Guv’nor’ – holds a special place in the heart of most West Ham supporters. That place being where the blood boils.

 

Paul Ince was one of the most exciting young players to come through the academy of football in the ‘80s. As such, he attracted the attention of Manchester United, who were keen to add his services to the side Alex Ferguson was constructing with eyes on achieving great things.

 

However, Ince’s transfer to Old Trafford was, to put it mildly, botched.

 

The 21-year-old Ince was convinced to pose for a picture in a Man United shirt as the deal was being negotiated, with the understanding that it would not be published until after his departure from Upton Park had been confirmed.

 

But the transfer stalled because Ince failed a medical, the picture was leaked, and the hatred commenced.

 

‘How dare he wear their shirt when he’s still our player?’ was the overriding belief from the claret and blue army, and they were particularly offended because Ince was supposed to be one of them. The former England captain was, after all, born and raised in Ilford.

 

It could perhaps be this feeling of betrayal that has made the grudge held against Paul Ince one that has never and probably will never die.

 

 

Jermain Defoe

 

When West Ham were relegated to the Championship in May 2003, Defoe could not even wait 24 hours before handing in a transfer request.

 

Similar to Ince, Defoe tries to defend his actions by playing the ‘I was young’ card – he was 21 years old when he tried to leave the Hammers, the same age as Ince was.

 

Defoe’s request was rejected by West Ham, and he was forced to play for the club in the Championship.

 

The diminutive striker coped well with the physical demands of England’s second tier; scoring 15 goals in 22 appearances for the Hammers. So it wasn’t long before Premier League clubs came knocking for Defoe. And he finally got his wish to leave when he secured a move to Tottenham Hotspur in January 2004.

 

Defoe tried to cushion the blow that his move to West Ham’s fierce rivals would mean to the Hammers supporters by saying sorry for his immature conduct when they went down.

 

“I mishandled that move and I can only apologise,” he said. “I’m young and I’ve learned from it. I still played my hardest for West Ham and gave them 100 per cent and want to thank the fans for their support.”

 

Anyone silly enough to side with Defoe after those words would have quickly seen through them when the then West Ham manager Alan Pardew shed some light on the deal that took the striker to White Hart Lane.

 

“It’s always a difficult decision to lose a great player but in the cold light of day we knew all the facts,” said Pardew.

 

“And the fact is, he wouldn’t sign a new contract for us.

 

“On numerous occasions he had been asked to come in and he made it very clear – well, not so much him but his agency – made it clear they were not prepared to do a deal.”

 

So Defoe tried to worm his way out of West Ham as soon as the club was in need, and did not stop until he got his own way.

 

While both he and Ince may well claim that they were too young to be held accountable for their actions, a 21-year-old would be tried as an adult if they committed a crime, which the Hammers faithful will always consider Defoe’s and Ince’s conduct to be.

 

 

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Harry Redknapp

 

As indicated above, Redknapp was once a West Ham hero. Anyone who said a bad word about him to a Hammers fan would, quite rightly, have received a torrent of abuse in response.

 

Redknapp rose through the ranks and West Ham and continued playing for the Hammers for seven years, rubbing shoulders with legends such as Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters in the meantime.

 

Later in life, Redknapp went on to take charge of West Ham and oversaw some of the best times the club has enjoyed in the modern era during his reign. Redknapp was instrumental in establishing West Ham as a club that belongs in the Premier League and his tenure included leading the Hammers to finishing 5th in the top flight in 1998/1999 – the Hammers’ highest finish since the Boys Of ’86 reached 3rd place in the old Division One, and a height they have not surpassed since.

 

However, in more recent times, the current QPR manager has taken to tormenting the club he once served with distinction, seemingly going out of his way to rock the West Ham boat at any given opportunity. This was especially the case during his time as manager of London rivals Tottenham from 2008 until he was sacked last summer.

 

While in charge at Spurs, ‘Arry managed to destroy his relationship with the fans that used to love him in east London by doing things such as scuppering West Ham’s deal to sign Eidur Gudjohnsen on loan from Monaco at the 11th hour in January 2011, and pulling out all the stops to prise Scott Parker away from the Boleyn Ground last season.

 

He has not changed his ways either. The ink had barely dried on his contract at Loftus Road when Redknapp started sniffing around Mohamed Diame.

 

Perhaps Redknapp’s quarrel with the Hammers was caused by bitterness about the events surrounding his exit from Upton Park over 12 years ago.

 

When he left, the club said Redknapp departed ‘by mutual consent’. But reports suggested at the time that Harry left as a very unhappy former Hammer because the board disagreed with his belief that he should have been let loose in the transfer market with Rio Ferdinand’s £18m transfer fee burning holes in his pockets.

 

Whatever happened, Redknapp’s descent from hero to villain is tough for West Ham to stomach. And, although Paul Ince has moved into management, it is Redknapp who has earned the ignominious title of the most hated boss from his former club.

 

 

Kevin Nolan

 

The only current player of the bunch, almost every Hammers fan loves to hate something about Kevin Nolan at the moment.

 

The captain has been awful during team’s awful run of form recently, and that cannot be a coincidence. He has done almost nothing constructive for the team of late and just looks out of his depth every time he steps onto the pitch.

 

There is no denying that Nolan is a player that can serve a purpose in a team, especially because he served that purpose for West Ham as recently as the beginning of this season, but he is not fulfilling that purpose anymore.

 

Anyone who chooses to defend Nolan will say that he is West Ham’s top scorer this season and remind you that he has a special relationship with Andy Carroll, which should blossom once again now the big centre-forward is fully fit.

 

It really is not difficult to counter those arguments though.

 

To begin with, Nolan’s place as West Ham’s top goalscorer is one that does not display his superior ability to score, but instead highlights just how poor the Hammers’ forwards have been so far in this campaign. Bear in mind Nolan has only scored six goals.

 

Secondly, anyone who saw the game against Aston Villa on Sunday witnessed a breakdown in the supposedly special relationship we thought Nolan had with Carroll.

 

But the love/hate relationship between Nolan and West Ham supporters comes as no surprise. It was almost inevitable, considering the captain is the embodiment of Sam Allardyce’s style of football – all brawn, bravado and long balls.

 

We can hope that this relationship may be more love than hate when the team return from their break in Dubai, but it seems Kevin Nolan will never win over the majority of West Ham fans simply because Sam Allardyce shares the exact same relationship with the clubs followers.

 

It goes back to the argument about the ‘West Ham way’ again. But we won’t get into that.

 

 

Haters

 

What may worry some fans reading this is that the idea of this article was only to write about the players that West Ham love to hate, past or present – it was not specified that they had to be players who have actually pulled on the claret and blue.

 

And yet, here we are with four former players Hammers and one current one who West Ham fans love to hate.

 

It may be easy to misinterpret this as West Ham fans just being ridiculously hard to please. Some may, for example, think it is hugely ungrateful of any Hammer to say something remotely negative about Harry Redknapp, given all that he did for the club. But, when you consider how he has gone about his business since he left Upton Park, the hatred towards him is fairly easy to understand.

 

If you look at those named above, it should be clear that the Hammers only ever hate players who go out of their way to humiliate the club that has given them the chance to shine. Be that by refusing to play, selfishly making a concerted effort to leave, going out of your way to cause problems for the club, or just not trying your best on the pitch.

 

The ultimate truth is that Hammers fans love to hate anyone who tries to harm their truest love of all: West Ham United Football Club.

 

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