FIVE moments that mattered in West Ham’s history

1. Winning the World Cup! – The 1966 England victory will always, always be linked to West Ham. And how could it not be? Our captain wore the armband for the national team, and Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters obviously played massive parts, with the former scoring the only ever World Cup final hat-trick. We will always have that sense of pride from the fact that our team massively influenced England’s most successful World Cup campaign.

2. Relegation… and going back up again – I’m not going to lie to you, I cried both times we got relegated. I cried a third time when our Play-off hopes were dashed by Neil Shipperley of Crystal Palace. What can I say? I’m an emotional wreck! Bobby Zamora and Ricardo Vaz Te will go down as Hammers heroes after their goals secured promotion back to the Premier League in our two victorious Play-off finals.

3. The Two Davids taking over – Even though some people haven’t got much time for the chairmen of our wonderful club, I think they’ve done a bloody good job! West Ham were on the brink of financial collapse after the mess left behind from their predecessors, and they’ve done brilliantly to bring in Sam Allardyce and give him essential funds to ensure that we went up at the first time of asking. Let’s face it, they’ve saved our club and David Gold and David Sullivan taking over was a huge turning point. We’ll forget the whole Avram Grant debacle…

4. FA Cups – Even though I was only alive for the 2006 FA Cup final, in which we were robbed by that bugger called Stevie G, West Ham have won 3 and there is still romance associated with our team and the competition. We won the cup in 1964, 1975 and, perhaps most fondly remembered,in 1980 against Arsenal. And hey, as a West Ham fan sometimes it’s actually nice to have a distraction from the league!

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5. The Academy of Football – This especially counts from the mid 1990s to the early noughties. Just think of the fantastic players that have come through our ranks to go on to be some of the best in the country. You can’t help thinking what our team would be like if we hadn’t had to mass-sell after relegation and financial worries. A short list of our academy graduates includes: Anton and Rio Ferdinand, Michael Carrick, Joe Cole, James Tomkins, Glen Johnson, Mark Noble… I could go on but you get the point!