(Photo by Phil Cole/Getty Images)
Danny Gabbidon made his first start in the Premier League since December 2007 at Wigan Athletic last weekend. That makes him the only surviving member from West Ham’s FA Cup final team from 2006, the perennially injured Dean Ashton, whose performance that day had left Liverpool bamboozled, notwithstanding.
Every other player from that day has been jettisoned. Alan Pardew proudly led West Ham out and was tipped as a future England manager, yet he now manages Southampton in League One.
The enthralling match against Liverpool falls into the category of what might have been. As it approached its end, Pardew’s unfancied West Ham led Liverpool 3-2. The West Ham fans were jubilant, dancing and singing and disbelieving. Then, disaster.
The stadium announcer at the Millenium Stadium was midway through revealing there would be four minutes of added time, when a clearance bounced to Steven Gerrard thirty yards from goal, and with all the deadly precision of a Roger Federer forehand, the Liverpool captain volleyed the ball back into the bottom corner of Shaka Hislop’s goal.
The equaliser took the match into extra-time and West Ham, broken-hearted, lost on penalties.
In many ways, this was far more impressive than Portsmouth winning the competition two years later, having only played one Premier League side. West Ham beat Blackburn, Bolton, Manchester City and Middlesbrough to reach the final, where they succumbed to the European champions only on penalties.
Despite the game ending in a glorious defeat, optimism about West Ham’s future prospects soared. Promoted to the Premier League after a two-year absence, Pardew had constructed an exciting side burgeoning with young talent.
Aside from their Cup run, West Ham were never out of the top 10 of the Premier League and finished ninth, winning at Arsenal and denying Tottenham a Champions League place along the way. Few suspected that this would be the apex of Pardew’s time in charge.
With UEFA Cup qualification assured, pundits and fans predicted big things from West Ham the next season, but the team had reached a level it could not surpass, and the descent was harsh, swift and unexpected. West Ham fell into a comfort zone during the summer, failing to make the requisite reinforcements, instead strengthening on the cheap.
The identity of the two remaining signings from that summer, Robert Green and Carlton Cole, suggest what might have been achieved had money been made available. Although there was the stunning capture of the two Argentinians, Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano, that merely created more problems than originally predicted.
After the final, Pardew could do no wrong, yet his seemingly unstoppable rise up the managerial ladder came crashing to a shuddering halt. He was the success story of the 2005-06 season, his team playing an all-action, quicksilver brand of football that spawned success home and away.
Just as importantly, this was a project very much centred upon English players, the likes of Anton Ferdinand, Nigel Reo Coker, Matthew Etherington and Marlon Harewood.
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