Remember me
Tony Cottee has a quiz question. We have barely pulled up our chairs overlooking the Southend seafront when he asks us to name all the players signed by the current West Ham owners that were sold on for a substantial profit.
No, Declan Rice doesn’t count because he came through the academy. Players signed for a fee and sold for one at least, say, £5m bigger. Clue: there’s only three of them.
One’s easy. Mohammed Kudus, £55million to rivals Tottenham in the summer. The next is a bit trickier until Cottee’s hint gives it away: ‘The best player in the final season at Upton Park. Scored one of the best free-kicks ever.’
Oh, Dimitri Payet. Duh. The third, he says, we’ll never get in a million years so puts us out of our misery. Flynn Downes, signed from Swansea for £12m in 2022 and sold to Southampton for £18m two years later.
‘Only three players in 16 years,’ says Cottee. ‘That shows you how good the recruitment has been, doesn’t it.’
Some may quibble over Ashley Fletcher’s absence, a free agent from Manchester United but to whom West Ham eventually paid compensation. Cottee can let the quizzers fight that out among themselves. This is a club, after all, that has spent more than £350m on nearly 60 forwards since 2010 including two more in Pablo and Taty Castellanos for nearly £50m in the last week alone.
Cottee, now 60, is just as fed up as every other West Ham fan. He’s a season ticket holder, one he pays for himself, and was at the London Stadium on Tuesday night to watch West Ham slump yet further towards relegation with defeat by Nottingham Forest. ‘We are in massive, massive trouble.’
That’s how he sees himself, as a fan. Not as the legend who scored 146 goals for the club, netted on his debut as a 17-year-old against Tottenham more than four decades ago, and was part of the ‘Boys of 86’, who this year celebrate 40 years since the finished third in Division One, but as the boy who went to Upton Park for the first time in 1972 and found his first love.
Tony Cottee, pictured on Southend seafront, is still a West Ham season-ticket holder
Declan Rice is one of the few success stories at West Ham in recent years
Over the course of two hours in the ballroom of the Roslin Beach Hotel, not far from his home in Southend, he gets it all off his chest. How they were right to leave Upton Park but should have moved to a purpose-built stadium like Everton. How he’d have gone for Slaven Bilic over Nuno Espirito Santo. How they should, really, have backed David Moyes.
‘I fell in love with West Ham as a six-year-old, and that will never change, but the club is completely different now to what it was what I first started supporting or playing,’ he says.
‘West Ham is, was, always a family club. It didn’t matter if you were in the South Bank, the Chicken Run, or the posh seats. Everyone knew everyone’s name.’
It was a quick, but telling, self-correction. ‘Well, it’s not a family club anymore because of decisions that have been made over the last 16 years.’
And, so, to the heart of it. The main reason many West Ham fans feel they are in this mess and against whom they continue to protest: the owners, namely David Sullivan and vice-chair Karen Brady.
‘There's never a plan,’ he says. ‘Any business, you have a five-year plan, a 10-year plan. West Ham have a five-day plan. They don't think ahead. We won the Youth Cup, we won the Conference League. It was a sliding doors moment in the club's history. Let's kick on. Let's get in the Champions League.
Cottee believes West Ham should have stuck with David Moyes after he led the club to glory in the Conference League, their first trophy since they lifted the FA Cup in 1980
'And what do we do? Let's go for the Championship instead. We haven’t replaced David Moyes and the recruitment has been terrible. Who's responsible for that? It's the board.’
As always with West Ham, the despair is best delivered via gallows humour. West Ham now serve a beer at the London Stadium called Lost Lager. ‘Only at West Ham could you go in after another defeat and say: “another pint of Lost, please!”.’
The message, though, is clear and passionate. ‘David Sullivan is a rich man. He doesn't have to sell, and no one's making him. But what I would emphasize to him is that he's a custodian of the club, not the owner. The fans own that football club, not the chairman, not the board. And as a custodian, you should do what's right for the football club and that means if someone comes along that he thinks is the right person to take the club forward, he should step aside.’
Cottee, it turns out, is a meticulous man. Since the age of seven, started by his dad, he’s kept scrapbooks of every season, including every game, every goal, even drawing little diagrams of how he’d scored them.
It’s how, when he was bored during Covid, he could work out how many headers he’d scored. It was 44. Not bad for a lad told he was too small to make it and certainly too small to become one of the finest goal scorers England has ever produced. Time for another Cottee quiz. ‘Since I retired, how many players have ended up with more top-flight goals than me?’
Cottee sits 17th on the all-time list on 214, scored for West Ham, Everton and Leicester, out of a career total of 306.
Cottee scored 115 of his 214 top-flight goals for West Ham, across two spells at the club
Wayne Rooney, surely? ‘No, he’s on 208,’ says Cottee in a flash. ‘The only one is Alan Shearer.’ Not even Harry Kane? Not yet, at least.
‘I was so pleased when Harry went to Munich because he’s on 213,’ grins Cottee. ‘I just want Harry to retire there. A bit worried about Erling Haaland, though.
‘Can you imagine how annoyed I get when they talk about the Premier League 100 Club? They say “oh Haaland’s joined the 100 Club” and they put the list up and I’m nowhere to be seen because I only scored 78 Premier League goals. There was life before the Premier League, you know. What about the other 136? Do they not count anymore?’
Cottee admits he recently saw an unofficial list online of the all-time leading League Cup goal scorers and, when he noticed he wasn’t on it, emailed the Football League to remind them that he should be whenever they get around to doing an official one.
For all that frustration and pedantry though, Cottee is not a man who craves the limelight. It’s why he struggled at being the British record transfer after his move to Everton despite a hat-trick on debut. ‘I was always just “The £2m man”, I was never just Tony Cottee. It weighed on my shoulders.’
Cottee with our man James at the Roslin Beach Hotel near his home in Southend
It’s why when he suffered a brain haemorrhage seven years ago, which he originally thought was sunstroke after a golf day, his first instinct was to keep it to himself. ‘I would describe myself as a bit old-fashioned, British stiff upper lip and all that,’ says Cottee. ‘The ultimate insult during my playing days was to have the physio come on. You couldn’t show any sign of weakness.
‘It was scary being in hospital and when they say they think they might have to operate on your brain. I was lucky it wasn’t a severe one, it could have been fata. I think that changed my view on life.’
So, too, did the night in November 2024 when he received a call from his nephew while out for dinner, a Wednesday night at 7pm, to tell him Cottee’s younger brother Paul had died of a cardiac arrest. ‘He was only 56. Gone. Wife, two kids. They were going to travel the world. He was a massive West Ham fan, my No 1 supporter. Why does it always happen to the good guys?
‘I had my niece saying to me, who's going to walk me down the aisle,’ says Cottee, now holding back tears. ‘I've got my nephew saying to me he’s got his 21st next year. What can you say? I couldn't give them the answers. All I keep saying is he's looking down on you, and he'll always be on your shoulder.’
Cottee’s mum, Carole, is in care home with dementia. ‘She doesn’t even remember I played for West Ham now,’ he adds. They have chosen not to tell her about Paul’s death.
‘It makes you appreciate life a little bit more.’ says Cottee, who recently became a grandfather for the first time. ‘It’s made me want to do more things, go on holidays, spend what I’ve got.’
Hammers stars react in their agonising 2-1 home defeat to Nottingham Forest last week
...as manager Nuno Espirito Santo despairs with his side now seven points from safety
He’s just come back from skiing in France. Like his scrapbooks, he’s got an old map on which he ticks off the countries he’s visited. ‘I think it’s 47 out of the 195. I haven’t been to Hawaii or Argentina.’
There are two things, above all others, he wants to do before he dies. ‘I want West Ham to win the FA Cup again – they need to be QPR on Sunday, I'm not sure that's going to happen – and I want England to win the World Cup.
‘I was at the Cup final in 1980 with my brother, it was one of the best days of my life. We celebrated in the fountains in Trafalgar Square.’
Cottee is spending the summer in Italy for his wife Karen’s 60th birthday, though he’s had to negotiate the original plan for them to fly back on July 19. That’s the day of the World Cup final.
‘I said let’s get back on the 18th...just in case.’