Animosity towards Everton manager Frank Lampard “hasn’t dimmed an inch” with some West Ham United supporters but they’ve changed their tune over David Moyes with most of them hoping “he never goes.” That’s the view of Tom Rennie, the host of Week In The Tackle Podcast & Grumpy Pundits for Sirius XMFC and Editor and Lead Commentator for talkSPORTLive and Oddspedia, who is a Hammers fan himself.
Over two decades on from the now Blues boss’ exit from the Boleyn Ground as a player, Lampard’s relationship with some of the Irons faithful remains a fractious one. Rennie told the ECHO: “His father Frank Lampard senior is an all-time legend and remains the second-highest appearance maker (670, behind Billy Bonds on 799) in the entire history of West Ham. At the time Frank junior came through, he was assistant manager to Harry Redknapp who is also his uncle (Lampard senior and Redknapp married sisters Patricia and Sandra Harris).
“When Frank junior came through, there were some fans that thought that it was nepotism that got him in the team, claiming he was fat, slow and not as good as some of the other academy products. There was Danny Williamson, who went to Everton and someone called Scott Canham – who I don’t recall – but he’s famous at West Ham because during a press conference which still exists on YouTube, one fan name checks him, asking why he was let go.
“Frank junior ended up playing more than 150 games for West Ham, he was part of the team that won the Intertoto Cup with the likes of Paolo Di Canio, Paulo Wanchope and Rio Ferdinand, a really good team that finished fifth in 1999. He was a core part of the side but some fans just never really liked him. I don’t know why. Maybe they thought it was nepotism or perhaps they thought that despite his decent scoring record, he just wasn’t very good.”
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Given that Canham went on to become a lower division journeyman, and the injury-plagued Williamson – who Everton swapped for David Unsworth before buying back the FA Cup winner a year later for £3million via a bizarre four-week spell at Aston Villa – is regarded as one of the Blues’ worst-ever pieces of business, it now seems incredible that the ability of a player like Lampard who would go on to become the Premier League’s sixth-highest all-time goalscorer and most prolific non-striker in the competition’s history could be questioned.
Rennie, who also cites a story that Lampard tells of some West Ham fans supposedly cheering when he broke his leg against Aston Villa as an example of the bad blood, insists that the midfielder was not operating at the stellar levels that helped him to win three Premier League titles, four FA Cups, two League Cups, a Champions League and UEFA Europa League at the time he swapped east London for the west end of the capital.
He said: “We sold Ferdinand and Lampard, like a lot of the players, thought it would be reinvested in the team by chairman Terry Brown but it wasn’t. Redknapp was sacked because he wanted more money to spend on the team and Frank junior understandably didn’t want to play for them anymore. It was a case of: ‘You’ve sacked my dad, my uncle and sold my best friend, you haven’t stuck to any of your promises about keeping the best players and reinvesting in the team.’ He had every right to leave but the relationship had always been a bit fractious.
“He left in 2001, Chelsea paid £11million so it wasn’t the biggest deal ever (Ferdinand had gone to Leeds United the previous year for £18million) and he wasn’t beloved by the West Ham fanbase a great deal. I think he was liked, I thought he was a good player, but he was never as good as the player he would become – he was nowhere near that at the time he left.
“After he’d gone, he kept getting asked about his previous club and he was always pretty blunt about the owner’s shoddy treatment of his dad and uncle, and that the only way was down for them. It was all pretty justified but it becomes criticism of West Ham at that point which didn’t go down particularly well.”
While the criticism Lampard received from some West Ham fans during his time at the club seems strange, Rennie believes that the player himself fanned the flames during his subsequent returns with Chelsea.
He said: “In the early years he came back and he got a bit of a light booing but it wasn’t as bad as it got. I was at one game where there was a fan who had got to the end of the tunnel and was standing there offering him out. It was vicious, horrible, the worst I’ve ever seen for any player coming back anywhere.
“The difference was that Joe Cole also went to Chelsea. He’s remained a big West Ham fan throughout his life and still is now. Lampard said something along the lines of: ‘I remember when Joe Cole first came to Chelsea he would turn away in disappointment if West Ham lost. I would smile.’
“There was one game at Stamford Bridge when Jimmy Walker saved a penalty by Lampard and all the West Ham fans went mental. Every time he came back to West Ham, he used to kiss the Chelsea badge and get right in the face of the home fans. If he scored a goal, he’d run up to the Bobby Moore Stand or the West Stand, which was the Rio Ferdinand Stand, and give them a bunch of grief. He used to really, really give it on the pitch when he scored and won for Chelsea at West Ham which during that era felt like all the time and by a lot.”
It’s now over 20 years since Lampard left West Ham and almost seven years since he played his last Premier League match, so visiting the London Stadium as a 43-year-old Everton manager, have both parties now mellowed? Rennie said: “After he left he never tried to build a bridge between himself and West Ham fans. He’s a local lad from a West Ham legend’s family and should be lauded by the club but I think he was bitter while he was there and after he left and that’s gone on for a long, long time and with some fans that continues to this day.
“There is a generation of fans, that I’m probably part of, with which it hasn’t dimmed an inch. Frank’s retirement from playing was brilliant for us because it stopped this sideshow every year that he came back. He was so in your face, going up to the hard core support, he really went for it.
“I think he said some conciliatory words while he was Chelsea manager and tried to move on from it and maybe the younger fans are more mellow to it but if Everton win 1-0 on Sunday, I have no doubt it would hit him again because it’s a scar that runs back to when he was a teenager, he would over-celebrate it.”
In contrast to Lampard though, Rennie believes that West Ham fans have changed their opinions dramatically over their former Everton manager David Moyes. The Scot, who enjoyed a tenure of over 11 years in charge at Goodison Park between 2002-13, initially took the reins with the Hammers in November 2017 but his contract was not renewed at the end of the season. However, in December 2019 he returned on an 18-month deal which last summer he extended for a further three years.
Rennie said: “David Moyes is interesting because the first time he came in, nobody at West Ham wanted him. Half of that was because people still liked Slaven Bilic and half was the feeling of broken dreams and broken promises, moving to the new stadium but having what were seen as s*** players and a s*** manager.
“By the time Moyes left, I think most fans felt he should have got a new contract. Things went sour pretty quickly under Manuel Pellegrini but when Moyes came back, there wasn’t a great deal of opposition but more indifference. It wasn’t a nightmare but it was seen as another unambitious hire after 18 months of: ‘We’ve got the old Real Madrid manager, it’s going to go well for us.’
“Second time around, people were begrudgingly alright with it. Nobody knew it was going to go as well as it did. I think most people knew he wanted to go back to Everton but they went with Carlo Ancelotti at the time.
“At this point though, I’d say 80% of the fanbase hope he stays forever. Then you’ve got the 10% who are always going to be unhappy with everything and the 10% who whinge at things like he supposedly doesn’t make substitutions very well. What he’s done for West Ham – other than possibly six months under Bilic when they had Dimitri Payet who I thought was the best player in Europe at the time – is probably the best we’ve had it since Frank Lampard was here and before that, the best since Trevor Brooking was here.
“That begrudging acceptance has morphed into: ‘We hope he never goes.’ Everton and West Ham are similar in many ways. They’re clubs with a massive fanbases and have decent amounts of money but lack competence and there are better rivals on the doorstep. Any time they try and dream, they’re met with the reality of: ‘Yeah but you’re still crap aren’t you?’
“Moyes builds that bridge as Evertonians know. Now he’s got to try and do what he could never achieve at Everton and get over that last hurdle. I don’t think he’ll get there but that’s a discussion as opposed to: ‘We’ve got to beat Burnley or we’re going down.’”
