Winston Reid experienced just about every emotion football is capable of throwing up during eleven years with Premier League outfit West Ham United.
The New Zealand icon bounced back from a ‘nightmare’ start to life in English football – Winston Reid credits Sam Allardyce with getting his career on the right track – and left a decade later as an undoubted cult hero.
Reid suffered the heartbreak of relegation into the Championship, and enjoyed the elation of promotion. He even scored the final goal ever at Upton Park. Former centre-back partner James Collins believes the Hammers had arguably the Premier League’s best defender for a time, too.
But, speaking on the latest edition of West Ham United’s Ironcast podcast, a man who joined from FC Midtjylland for just £4 million back in 2010 does have a couple of nagging regrets when looking back on his very varied spell in claret and blue.
Winston Reid reveals his Champions League regret at West Ham United
Reid looks back on the 2015/16 season under Slaven Bilic with a sense of ‘what might have been’.
A season which started with a remarkable trio of away wins – at Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City – and ended with West Ham in seventh. Only twice have they finished higher in a Premier League season.
Yet, Reid feels that the opportunity to play Champions League football for the very first time was something the Hammers let slip through their fingers. They would end up only four points off Man City in fourth, after all.
“I think, in general, towards the end of the season, the last ten games or whatever it was, I just remember we were drawing too many games,” Reid says. “Last minute, five minutes left, other teams scoring against us.
“I think if we changed that, we might have got into fourth because we dropped so many points from winning positions towards the end.”
West Ham actually drew four successive matches in March and April. They were leading going into the final 20 minutes of all four of those games too. The most frustrating of all, a 95th minute equaliser conceded against eventual league champions Leicester City.
A stunning 4-1 home collapse against Swansea and a final day defeat to Stoke ended any lingering hopes of Champions League qualification.
Reid bemoans injury crisis which sparked EFL Cup collapse at Manchester City
Reid also wishes he could have got his hands on some silverware in a West Ham shirt. The closest they came, during his 11-year stint, was probably that run to the semi-finals of the EFL Cup back in 2013/14.
An untimely injury crisis scuppered that chance, however. With Reid and Collins both unavailable, Allardyce was forced to parachute in loan signing Roger Johnson just two days into his Hammers career. Johnson started alongside left-back George McCartney in the middle of a ramshackle backline.
Man City would take no pity, storming to a 6-0 first leg win before taking the aggregate scoreline to 9-0 at Upton Park.
“In general, would I have loved to win a cup? Yes. [The closest we came] would have been the Carling Cup semi-final when we played City,” Reid recalls.
“Everyone was injured! I was injured, [Collins] was injured, we didn’t have any defenders basically. [Roger Johnson] came in on loan.”
