WHZ Top 3s: West Ham’s top three one season wonders
Welcome to West Ham Zone’s Top 3s series, where we will take look through Hammers history and decide which people or events rank highest with topics as varied as players, managers and goals…
One season wonders. Every team has them. The players who look like world-beaters for one year before a sharp decline in form results in confusion over whether the player was actually good or just in a very rich vein of form.
West Ham are no different. Through the years many players have arrived in East London displaying great talent before inexplicably losing it all, seemingly overnight.
These players have then fallen out of favour and been banished the foreign lower leagues, to clubs who are willing to take them on in the hope they recover some of their previous form.
Premier League clubs have less patience and fans have even less time for underperforming players which is why some of these ‘wonders’ didn’t last very long once their form started to decline.
Luckily there haven’t been many one-season wonders in recent years so we are looking a bit further back for these picks.
Here are West Ham Zone‘s top three one season wonders.
3.) Ricardo Vaz Te
Thanks for the memories Ricardo. We’ll always remember the 10 goals in 15 Championship games in the 2011/12 season including the winner in the play-off final against Blackpool which confirmed promotion back to the Premier League. Unfortunately, Vaz Te left all his talent in the second tier. It wasn’t that he was unable to make the jump in quality the Premier League demands, but he looked like a different player in the top flight. All of the energy and trickery vanished. Five league goals followed over the next three years and after his contract was terminated he signed for Turkish side Akhisar Belediyespor.
2.) Herita Ilunga
Ilunga signed for the Hammers on loan in 2008. He quickly established himself as first-choice left-back at Upton Park and his impressive start saw him voted October’s player of the month by the fans. At the end of the season, West Ham chose to secure the permanent services of the Toulouse man. Ilunga was blighted by injury and discipline problems after he signed permanently. He only made 17 appearances the following season and after being in and out of the team for several years he was loaned out to Doncaster Rovers when the Hammers were relegated before having his contract terminated in January 2012. What a decline.
1.) Sebastien Schemmel
Ah Sebastien Schemmel, what might’ve been? The French defender signed for West Ham in the summer of 2001 and won ‘Hammer of the year’ at the end of his first season in English football. He made 35 Premier League appearances that season and he was a huge part of the reason the Hammers finished 7th in the table. He was a monster at the back and he was a reliable presence in the defence every time he played. However, the 2002/03 season saw a severe drop in form from Schemmel. He looked a shadow of his former self to the point where it was a risk even having him in the team. He was allowed to leave in 2003 as he joined Portsmouth before signing for French side Le Havre a year later and shortly after that, he retired.
In other West Ham news, the status of Arthur Masuaku has been cleared up after confusion over he went missing from his national side’s matchday squad.