West Ham’s best manager in recent years

This Saturday sees the Hammers undertake our first away game of the season; and as fate would have it, it’s against ex-manager Alan Pardew’s Newcastle United.

The knives are out for good old Pards with Joe Kinnear’s sudden position as director of football undermining his position as manager and of course after the trouncing at the Etihad on Monday night.

Saturday’s game between Newcastle and West Ham will be the fourth time Pards will have taken on his old club since he was sacked; so I guess now’s as good a time as any to look back at his Hammers tenure.

Alan Pardew succeeded Glen Roeder as West Ham United manager early in the 03-04 season; the club had just been relegated and were desperate to get back at the first time of asking (sound familiar?) and he very nearly achieved it; leading the club to 4^th in the league and a play-off semi-final show down with Joe Royle’s Ipswich Town, in which the Hammers came out on top with a memorable win under lights at Upton Park that saw us come from a goal down in the first leg to win the 2^nd thanks to a worldy from Matty Etherington and a goal as ugly as it was important from Christian Dailly. However West Ham would then go on to lose to Crystal Palace in the final and our shot at instant redemption was dashed.

The subsequent 04-05 season was Pardew’s first full season at the helm and it was a struggle; despite the outstanding form of Teddy Sheringham and Marlon Harewood who scored 40 plus league goals between them; the Hammers only managed to finish the season in 6^th place, once again we faced Ipswich in the end of season lottery and once again Ipswich were slain, this time however West Ham were to triumph in the play-off final against Preston thanks to Bobby Zamora’s winner at the Millennium Stadium.

Leading a club to back to back play-off finals was an incredible achievement, one which Alan Pardew deserves immense credit and respect for.

The 05-06 season was Pardew’s finest at West Ham; our first season back amongst the elite was supposed to be a struggle…it was a breeze. The club finished the season in 9^th place with 55 points, playing some wonderful football and reaching the FA cup final which guaranteed a return to European football. Though the season was a triumph it ultimately ended on a sour note…West Ham were seconds away from winning the 2006 FA cup; then up popped Steven Gerrard and the rest is history.

Nevertheless it was an encouraging 3^rd season for Pardew at West Ham and the future seemed bright.

The 06-07 season was to prove Pards’ last in the Hammers hot-seat, the club limped out of the UEFA cup in the first round losing to Serie A side Palermo 4-0 on aggregate, a run of 8 successive defeats which culminated in being dumped out of the League cup by Chesterfield was the beginning of the end for Pardew. Ultimately it was the 4-0 defeat at the hands of Sam Allardyce’s Bolton Wanderers that was his coup de grace as shortly after he was replaced by Alan Curbishley.

Looking back Alan Pardew did a good job at West Ham; he got us back into the Premier League, kept us up in that all important first season and came tantalisingly close to winning us a trophy.

Pardew in my opinion is easily the best manager West Ham have had in recent years, till Big Sam came along and hopefully on Saturday Allardyce can push Pardew a little closer to the edge just like he did all those years ago.