EXTRA TIME

Ralph reigns

November 7, 2020 at 7:06 am Leave a comment

Ralph Hasenhüttl is the first Austrian manager whose team has topped the English topflight. Last time West Ham have been in this place for a short time was in 2006. The Hammers are in action on Saturday against Scott Parker’s Fulham.

Southampton are top of the Premier League after beating Newcastle 2-0 on Friday night, and that is a status they have never before enjoyed. It may only last a few hours but to borrow a now infamous phrase from the American elections, the cry from their fans is also clear: “Stop the count.” In fact, it is the first time Southampton have been at the summit of the top flight since 1988 – when Joe Biden made his first attempt to be US president.

No one expects Southampton to stay there but, importantly, this was their first Friday night fixture since being humiliated 9-0 at home by Leicester City 13 months ago and it capped a stunning turnaround overseen by Ralph Hasenhuttl (53), who was delighted with the way his team achieved this victory without their top scorer Danny Ings.

“Our fans will love it and they’ll make a picture of the table,” Hasenhuttl who had tested positive for Corona in summer said. “For us, it’s nice but it shouldn’t kill the hunger for more. We should stay hungry and we should feel anything is possible with this team. It is a little scary what we are doing at the moment, to be honest, but not surprising when I see what we are working on. We made so many big steps forward.”

West Ham sits in 14th before more games of this round are being played on Saturday and Sunday, including Manchester City v Liverpool. Hammers manager David Moyes suggested that West Ham could well climb the league table in the coming weeks. On Saturday night they play a London derby against struggling Fulham, managed by former Hammer Scott Parker.

As far as I remember, the last time West Ham topped the table was on Tuesday, 22 August 2006. The Hammers had beaten Charlton 3-1 at Upton Park in the first game of the season (goals: Marlon Harewood 2; Carlton Cole). Their next game against Watford on the following Tuesday was the first match of the second round and the only one played on this day. Therefore a 1-1 draw at Vicarage Road (goal: Bobby Zamora) was enough to climb to the top of the table for 24 hours.

Some months before the Hammers had only been narrowly beaten on penalties by Liverpool in the famous FA Cup final 2006 and had had a very good first PL season 2005/06 after their promotion from the Championship. Now expectations were high for the next term and it was expected that Alan Pardew would lead the Irons to an even better following season, especially as West Ham had secured a shock transfer of Argentine stars Javier Mascherano and Carlos Tevez to east London.

But the shortlived lead in the second round was followed by a winless streak of ten more games, and West Ham dropped down to the relegation zone with Pardew unable to integrate the Argentines into the team. The Islandic owners who had bought West Ham at the beginning of this season replaced Pardew with Alan Curbishley before Christmas, but it took until the last game of the season against then champions Manchester United that West Ham, due to Tevez’s single goal of the match, was able to secure their “great escape” from relegation.

Carlos Tevez went to Manchester Utd afterwards to become part of a team that won its second of three consecutive Premier League titles the next season and West Ham finished tenth in the following 2007/08 season. Curbishley was replaced by Gianfranco Zola in autumn 2008 when Curbs resigned due to conflicts on transfer issues with the owners of the Club.

Scott Parker’s revisiting West Ham

At this time the manager of West Ham’s opponents, Scott Parker, who was one of the finest midfielders in modern West Ham history, played for the Hammers. He was signed in 2007 under the tenure of Curbishley and joined the Hammers from Newcastle.

Parker was voted “Hammer of the Year” twice in 2009 and 2010. In the following season of lows under Avram Grant which resulted in West Ham being relegated again, Parker was voted the “Football Writer’s Association Player of the Season” 2010/11. Therefore Parker became the first player to claim this accolade whilst in a relegated side. Few players could leave a relegated West Ham to join Spurs and still be held in as high regard as Scott. A tenacious battler who often chipped in with a match-winning performance.

Let’s hope he won’t win it tonight against West Ham as manager of Fulham!

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