As West Ham United prepare to travel to face Tottenham Hotspur under the Wembley floodlights in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday night, West Ham TV's Watch With... presenter Chris Scull makes lists of things and asks if you remember them...
Being a West Ham fan and almost exclusively going to West Ham games, you don’t really get a sense whether something is peculiar to your club, or all clubs in general.
Nowhere is this more apparent to me than night games.
Night games feel like something very special for West Ham, in a way that seems like they aren’t for most teams.
West Ham players talk about how famous they are, us fans seem to enjoy them more than fans of other teams, and there just seems to be something inexplicably different about it all. With that in mind, wrap up warm and let me take you on a journey to my Top 3 favourite night games.
3. West Ham United 4-3 Tottenham Hotspur, Premier League, Monday 24 February 1997
Firstly, I find it completely mad that this game happened more than 20 years ago – sitting down to write this now, it’s like I’ve just noticed the passage of time. The game itself seemed to snap, crackle and pop all night long.
The backstory is that, as was the theme in this period, West Ham were in serious relegation danger. We couldn’t get a goal for love, so we parted with some money; in comes Hartson from Arsenal and Kitson from Newcastle. With the pair of them, on their debuts, looking like two of the best signings ever made.
The wind swirled, Upton Park roared. The game itself was as topsy-turvy as anything we’ve seen. Spurs up 0-1. West Ham get back at them to go 2-1 up; with Dicks leading the charge. Somehow 3-1 West Ham, then Spurs back in it at 3-3. Then up pops Dicks, to lash home one of the fiercest penalties ever struck for 4-3; the great escape was on and West Ham fired on all cylinders to stay up again that season, with games in hand.
A relief for us, and probably a relief for Ian Walker that he got nowhere near the Dicks penalty, lest his head had been taken clean off.
2. West Ham United 2-0 Ipswich Town, First Division Play-Off semi-final second leg, Tuesday 18 May 2004
For a long time, this was by far the best atmosphere I’d ever heard at a match. The air seemed to actually fizz.
The backstory here is that West Ham had been relegated the previous season with perhaps the most ludicrously talented team ever to go down from the Premier League.
What followed was a tough season in England’s second tier with a young Alan Pardew at the helm come May 2004.
Despite never really looking like attaining automatic promotion, we comfortably qualified for the Play-Offs.
However, the first leg at Portman Road ended for us in a 1-0 defeat. So, to Upton Park, on a Tuesday night, under the lights; with everything at stake.
Pardew had called for a ‘carnival atmosphere’ before the game, and had the team led out of the tunnel by a man in, seemingly, Boer War-era military regalia playing a bugle horn. It was a bizarre sight, but one that somehow fired the atmosphere up another level.
The first half ended in an edgy 0-0 stalemate. Out came West Ham in the second half, needing a 2-0 victory to send us to our first showpiece final in a very long time (Intertoto aside).
With the pressure seemingly at breaking point, Matty Etherington got the ball on the edge of the box and fired in a left-footed drive that flew directly into the top corner; pandemonium.
Yet we still needed one more. We needed a hero. West Ham corner into the box, Christian Dailly conspires to control it with his breadbox (what a man), and flick it meekly into the bottom corner; bedlam.
One of the most unbelievable nights of football I can remember. And all I’m prepared to say about that Play-Off run.
1. West Ham United 3-2 Manchester United, Premier League, Tuesday 10 May 2016
In writing about this game, the greatest game of football I’ve ever seen, I’m reminded of the lyrics to a song about Ireland beating England at the Euros in 1988, ‘Joxer Goes To Stuttgart’ by Christy Moore: “What happened next is history brought tears to many eyes, that day will be the highlight of many people’s lives”.
The backstory here needs no explanation, this is the end of the Upton Park era. And like all classic West Ham v Manchester United matches, we had almost nothing to play for while they had almost everything; in this case, a Champions League place.
Before the game, we soaked in everything for one last time; the streets, the shops, the pubs, the Billy Bonds Burger stall. The kick-off was delayed, somehow adding to the drama. They ran out of beer in the Chicken Run concourse, somehow making the whole thing more emotional.
By the time the teams appeared onto the pitch, us fans were ready to do battle one final time; there was one last dreamy rendition of Bubbles, goosebumps and a couple of tears all round. Then the football started and unbelievably, we took the lead thanks to Diafra ‘He scores when he wants’ Sakho.
Half-time saw us with a one-goal advantage, but within six minutes of the restart, United had equalised. Shortly after that, they took the lead. Cue every commentator and his dog remarking that Anthony Martial hadn’t read the script.
At which point, West Ham picked the script back up again and so delivered four of the best minutes of delirium ever witnessed at Upton Park. First Antonio, then Winston Reid delivering us the lead, 3-2, and marking his place in the record books as the last man ever to score at Upton Park.
The rest of the game disappeared before us, then the whistle, then the end of our 112 years at Upton Park. I don’t know if it’s just us, or whether it’s like this at other clubs, but there really does seem to be something special about seeing West Ham under the lights.