1965 European Cup Winners’ Cup winner Brian Dear believes West Ham United’s future is a bright one...
I think we are doing great at the moment. We are through to the last 16 of the FA Cup and we came back well at Norwich in the Premier League on Saturday and could easily have gone on to win that game in the end.
We have got some really big games coming up, starting with Sunday’s FA Cup tie at Blackburn Rovers, then the home league games with Sunderland and Tottenham Hotspur.
Even as a West Ham man, I have to say I watched Tottenham play Manchester City on Sunday and they have got some good players, but I don’t think they are too different to us.
If we had not had so many injuries to key players like Winston Reid, James Tomkins, Dimitri Payet, Diafra Sakho and Manuel Lanzini this season, I believe we could have been up there with them challenging.
If all of those boys had been fit, most of them would have been in the side and we’d have probably collected more than the 40 points than we have already.
It has been hard for Slaven Bilic at times, but we have done well and are in a good position going into the final couple of months of the season.
We go to Blackburn on Sunday and we have got a great chance of getting through to the quarter-finals of the FA Cup.
When you look back at the last round and the replay against Liverpool, it couldn’t have gone any better, could it? If it was the last FA Cup tie at Upton Park, to win it in the last minute was special.
I’ve been coming back to games for 40 years and that was one of the loudest atmospheres I’ve heard in a long time, when Angelo Ogbonna’s header hit the back of the net!
Next season, we will have an even bigger crowd cheering us on at the new Stadium and I think it’s great what the Board have done with the pricing of the Season Tickets there.
I recently went down with my son and two grandsons to the Reservation Centre and sorted out our seats for next season and we’ve got a great view, so they’re all happy about that!
I know we will all miss Upton Park – I loved playing there and have some great memories of the place – but I also know a lot of Season Ticket Holders and supporters who are looking forward to moving to a bigger new home in Stratford.
Driving in and out of games at Upton Park is a nightmare, whereas the new Stadium is going to be so easy to get to. I live in Southend and taking the train into Stratford will be simple.
It’s going to be easy to get to the new Stadium on the Greater Anglia line out of Liverpool Street, the c2c line from Southend and Basildon, and on the Underground and Overground.
Getting back to the here and now and we’ve got this FA Cup tie at Blackburn to look forward to. Although we are the favourites, I played in games where we came unstuck against lower division opposition.
We need to go up there and put out a strong team and if we play well, we’ll have too much for them. Then, all we want is a home draw in the quarter-finals and we’ll have a great chance of going back to Wembley!
Brian