Читать книгу For The Claret & Blue - Mickey Smith - Страница 13
ОглавлениеIf ever a saga truly summed up the agony side of being a West Ham supporter, then Mannygate was it. I have seen West Ham knocked out of Cups by all manner of reasons over the years – abject surrender, refereeing blunder, bad luck – but this administrative cock-up was a new one even for us. For once we had done the business on the day, only to be denied by an off-the-pitch cock-up that saw an ineligible player take the field. Did he smoke the winner in? Did he make a last-ditch tackle or score a crucial penalty in the shoot-out? Nope – he was on the pitch for six minutes and touched the ball briefly twice. Emmanuel Omoyimni – I couldn’t even spell his bloody name until this incident. Now no West Ham fan will ever forget it.
Three things still grate with me even today. The first is Doug Ellis, Chairman of Aston Villa. Our error was stupid, but innocuous and had no bearing whatsoever on the result of the match. He was on about us cheating and, when the FA eventually caved in, the cheeky sod said, ‘West Ham should be grateful they are still in the competition at all.’ Second was the fact that you knew that, had Manchester United or Arsenal committed a similar offence, they would still have progressed to the semi-final. Ferguson would have gone purple with rage at the mere thought that his side would be denied their rights by such a meaningless error, and the FA would probably have given them a bye to the final to compensate his hurt feelings.
But by far the most galling aspect was the Tranmere-Sunderland FA Cup tie that happened a couple of weeks later. Tranmere were hanging on with a 1-0 lead when one of their players was sent off. As he departed from the pitch, Tranmere brought a sub on! This ‘extra player’ then made a crucial headed clearance in the last minutes. So West Ham had an ineligible player on the pitch who made two irrelevant touches, whereas Tranmere had an extra player on who made a decisive clearance. You’d think that would make Tranmere’s error more serious than ours, wouldn’t you? You might, but the powers that be didn’t. The Tranmere result stood, and the ref got a slight rap on the knuckles. Manny’s two irrelevant touches rendered the whole tie void, and we had to replay.
The first Villa match itself was one of those wild West Ham games that make you think, This club is going to kill me. At the time West Ham were flying, and Villa were in a run of diabolical form. Thus, you’d think we’d have torn into them from the kick-off to exploit their fragile confidence and impose ourselves. However, we sat back and Villa scored first after five minutes. We slowly stirred, and by the last fifteen minutes were pounding away at the Villa goal and grabbed a crucial equaliser soon after. The game looked set to enter extra time when, with a couple of minutes to go, Dion Dublin cracked home a stunning volley. Twenty-three thousand West Ham fans sat muted in shock and disbelief. But, with the ninety-minute mark long gone and the ref poised with his whistle, Kitson was bundled over in the box and we got a highly dubious penalty. Amid crackling tension, Di Canio drove the penalty low to the keeper’s right. It was the last kick of normal time. After a fairly insipid extra half-hour, we entered a penalty shoot-out. Di Canio started well, driving his penalty low and hard to the keeper’s right. Then, tragedy struck when Sinclair missed our third kick, and yet again we stared down the barrel of defeat. But Alan Wright and then – inevitably – Gareth Southgate missed for Villa, and we went home in utter delirium. We could almost smell the silver polish on that elusive first trophy for twenty years – Leicester, a team we did the double over that season, waited in the semis, and Tranmere emerged from the all-First Division other semi-final to provide final opponents. It was to last just 48 hours …
The feelings of dismay and despair when the Mannygate story broke were hard to take. To have something that you already had taken away was unbelievable. I remember the feeling that we would never win a trophy again. It’s very hard to say who was at fault. The company secretaries resigned, but you wonder why Redknapp, whose policy it was to loan players to lower-division clubs, didn’t know or check with Manny. Or why Manny didn’t stick his hand up and say, ‘Er boss, I did play for Gillingham in this Cup whilst on loan, are you sure I’m OK to play?’ To compound it, Redknapp, when asked why he brought Manny on, said, ‘I don’t really know why I brought him on.’ So our best opportunity for silverware goes down the swanny courtesy of a substitution that had no reason or logic behind it. Tremendous. So very West Ham.
By the time of the replayed fixture all West Ham fans were fervently hoping that we’d put Villa away again. Then, in about fifty years’ time, maybe we could have seen the funny side – ‘Hey, do you remember that Villa quarter-final? Two matches for the price of one, and we’re the only team ever to win a trophy having won the quarter-final twice.’ However, reality had to intrude and our defeat in the replay condemns Mannygate to the Hammers Hall of Horrors for the rest of time. In truth, Villa, buoyed by their unexpected and undeserved good fortune, had begun to find form, whereas our shattered team had begun to struggle.
On the night itself, we had opportunities to win but did not take them. We took the lead soon after half-time with an excellent Lampard lob, and were within minutes of the final whistle and a 1-0 win when Taylor equalised for Villa. Minutes into extra time Taylor got another, and we were 2-1 down. But we got another penalty, and Di Canio stepped up. Now, note my description of Di Canio’s previous two penalties against Villa in this tie. Low and hard to the keeper’s right. Perhaps he thought that he’d double-bluff James in the Villa goal – surely he’d go to the other side, and thus by going right again the keeper would be fooled. If that was his plan, it did not work. James dived the same way that Di Canio had put his previous two penalties and, lo and behold, there was the ball to push away. Villa added a third, and the fat lady broke into song.
You can always look back and find turning points in a club’s history. We turned for the better when we signed Kitson and Hartson in 1997, which saved us from relegation and saw us start a run of three seasons in the top half, plus the Intertoto run. This may turn out to be a negative turn. At the time of the first Villa victory we were on a great run of League form and were, of course, in the semi-finals of the Worthington Cup. After Mannygate, our form fell away and we missed out on a League European spot as well as the chance of UEFA Cup football via the Worthington Cup. Villa revived and went on to clinch an Intertoto spot. Had we, say, gone on to win the Worthington Cup and clinch a UEFA Cup spot, then that summer may have been very different. The Cup final cash, plus a UEFA Cup place, plus a higher League finish may have seen Redknapp given a few more million to spend over the summer, and seen us as a more attractive club to come to. Perhaps Rio would not have made his mind up to leave, resulting in us finally accepting Leeds’ £18 million a few months later. Perhaps a nice UEFA run would have seen us not needing Leeds’ £18 million, and telling them to fuck off. We will never know. But this will always be one of my darkest episodes in following West Ham Untied FC.
