The ‘West Ham Way’: A breeding ground for managers

Be careful what you wish for.

The past three or four seasons have been pretty close to halcyon ones for West Ham United with two top-seven Premier League finishes, three runs deep into Europe, and a major trophy secured for the first time in more than four decades, and yet…certain sectors of the Hammers support are still not happy.

The price of tickets, playing football in an athletics stadium, the supposed business-like detachment of a board with at least one-and-a-half eyes on the bottom line rather than on events on the pitch, and a perceived lack of entertainment and ambition from manager, David Moyes, and his backroom staff, have led to the disenchantment of reasonably large swathes of support.

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‘We are not playing the ‘West Ham Way’. We should be more entertaining and play football as it should be played,’ is a common gripe from the bubbles on social media, but is it fair? 

Has there ever really been a ‘West Ham Way’, and if so when, exactly?

A glance through the history books will show a distinct lack of any real ‘Golden Era’ for the Hammers, with three FA Cups, one European Cup Winners’ Cup and last season’s Europa Conference League being the only major trophies secured in West Ham’s entire existence. Yet – like Everton to a degree – the Hammers have a reputation for…well, I am not sure what, exactly.

However, what is undeniable is that several West Ham players from certain periods in the club’s past have gone on to forge successful careers in management and so perhaps after all there was something in the water at Upton Park and Chadwell Heath, the traditional stadium and training ground of West Ham.

If one takes a look back at team lists during the period of West Ham’s success in the mid-1960s when the FA Cup and European Cup Winners’ Cup were secured in successive seasons, the names of such luminaries as John Bond, Ken Brown, Geoff Hurst, Bobby Moore, and Ronnie Boyce loom large, while either side of this period saw sterling on-the-field contributions from the likes of Malcolm Allison, Harry Redknapp, and Billy Bonds.

All of these esteemed players went into management or coaching – with various levels of success, it has to be said – and so a brief gander at some of their careers in the dugout is called for here.

Looking at the starting line-up of West Ham’s 1964 FA Cup Final team against Preston North End, the names of Bond, Moore, Hurst and Boyce leap out. According to what may be folklore, these players, amongst others, would meet in the cafe over the road from Upton Park after training daily where they would chew the fat over tactics, team selection and coaching and training methodologies 

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John Bond made his biggest mark as a manager at Manchester City, who he led to the 1981 FA Cup Final, but he also had a long and varied management career in charge of a number of clubs. Starting at Bournemouth in 1970, Bond led the club to promotion from the Fourth Division at the end of his first season and nearly followed that up with another promotion the next season. Unfortunately, in the era of two and two down, Bournemouth would eventually finish third and just miss out.

In November 1973, Bond was headhunted by Norwich City where he would remain for the next seven years. Relegation in 1974 was put right by an immediate promotion the next year and a Wembley appearance in the 1975 League Cup Final. 

In October 1980, Bond was appointed manager of Manchester City, replacing his old West Ham colleague, Malcolm Allison, and into the breach at Carrow Road stepped Bond’s assistant, Ken Brown.

After the near miss in the 1981 FA Cup Final, City started the 1981-82 season in fine form and for two-thirds of the campaign were in contention for the title before slipping away. However, within a year Bond had left the club following a drop in the team’s performances and a falling out with the board, and Bond embarked on what became a journeyman’s trawl around the football league at outposts such as Burnley, Swansea City, Birmingham City and Shrewsbury without much success.

The man who replaced Bond at Norwich, Ken Brown, would hold onto the hot seat for seven years, during which time he would lead the Canaries back to Wembley where the 1985 League Cup would be secured and also to a top-five finish in the 1987 First Division table. Unfortunately for Brown, he would be rather controversially dismissed just a few months later after the club started the 1987-88 season poorly.

After leaving Norwich City, Brown spent a very short time at Shrewsbury Town before enjoying two years in charge of Plymouth Argyle. After his time at Home Park was up, Brown never returned to club management but did act as a scout for the England national team under the leaderships of Terry Venables, Glenn Hoddle and Kevin Keegan.

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John Bond’s predecessor as Manchester City boss was Malcolm Allison and it is fair to say that he took neither his dismissal nor the identity of his successor well. According to Bond, Allison had always been rather condescending to him in the time they shared the West Ham changing room and he was under no illusions as to the older man’s general opinion of him. 

Allison had been in charge at Maine Road for around eighteen months after taking over the reins for the second time, and it is fair to say that things had not worked out. An extensive overhaul of what had been a fairly talented and promising squad had not been successful, and by October 1980 City were mired in relegation trouble and so a change was inevitable. 

Allison had enjoyed considerable success as coach at City beginning a decade or so earlier when he had been working alongside the legendary Joe Mercer, but when Allison allegedly manoeuvred himself into the hot seat, supposedly pushing Mercer ‘upstairs’ in the process, things had not gone so well and Allison had left the club for Selhurst Park and successive relegations with Crystal Palace.

Following his unhappy sojourn back at Maine Road, Allison would once again return to Palace before embarking on a varied and diverse journey that took in several clubs in Portugal and the Middle East, a spell at Middlesborough, and some dips into the English non-league system.

In 1966, England won some tournament or the other, or so we are led to believe.

Amongst the ranks of ‘Ramsey’s Heroes’ that day was the West Ham trio of Martin Peters, Bobby Moore and Geoff Hurst. All three contributed greatly to England’s success, with Hurst famously grabbing a hat-trick, Peters scoring England’s other goal, and Moore captaining the side and thus lifting the scrap of metal at the end of proceedings.

Unfortunately, none of the three enjoyed anywhere near the same levels of success upon venturing into the dugout once their playing careers were over with the case of Bobby Moore being particularly poignant. 

Upon retirement from playing, Moore was approached by the Watford Chairman to take over at Vicarage Road, but unfortunately, the Watford board refused to rubber-stamp the decision and eventually, the gig went to future England manager, Graham Taylor. Moore went on to have uninspiring spells in charge of non-league Oxford City and then Southend United before moving into media work. 

As for that pesky Watford Chairman who was forced into making a humiliating climb-down, well… he did quite well in life going forward.

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Martin Peters, meanwhile, had a short and undistinguished spell as manager of Sheffield United which saw the club relegated to the bottom division for the first time in their history.

Geoff Hurst, he of ‘1966 hat-trick fame’, was the one of the three who, initially at least, seemed to make the best fist of the management game. After hanging up his boots in the professional game, Hurst spent three years as player-manager of non-league Telford United before being appointed to the backroom staff of Ron Greenwood’s England set up on a part-time basis. 

In 1979, Hurst joined Chelsea as assistant to manager, Danny Blanchflower, before taking over the reins when Blanchflower was sacked. Two seasons went by with Chelsea among the front-runners for promotion each time but, after just missing out on goal difference in 1980, and then falling away badly at the tail end of the season a year later, Hurst was sacked. Two years managing in Kuwait then followed.

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Former West Ham players who actually went on to manage the club include Billy Bonds, Harry Redknapp, and as caretaker, Ronnie Boyce. Boyce stepped in for one game after the departure of Lou Macari in February 1990, before handing over the reins to Billy Bonds. Boyce was involved in the club in one capacity or another for over 36 years after signing as an apprentice in 1959.

That just leaves us with a look at the Bonds-Redknapp axis. Billy Bonds ploughed his trade on the pitch for West Ham for more than twenty years before finally calling it a day and taking a place on the backroom staff in 1988. In 1990, he was appointed manager upon the resignation of Lou Macari, with the team by now in the Second Division.

In four full seasons in charge, Bonds oversaw two promotions to the top flight as well as one relegation, a run to the FA Cup semi-finals, and a respectable 13th-place finish in the Premier League. 

In the summer of 1994, Bonds was controversially replaced as manager at Upton Park by Harry Redknapp whom he had brought to the club as his assistant in 1992. Following his departure from the club, Bonds spent some time coaching at both Reading and Queens Park Rangers before managing Millwall for a season.

As for ‘Arry Redknapp…what can one say? 

Not much, as it happens.