Former West Ham defender Nigel Winterburn has said Sincil Bank is not going to be like Wembley for the Hammers next season, but they’ll have to treat it like it is.
Winterburn, who is best known for his time at Arsenal, started his career with Wimbledon and made his name in the 1983/84 season. Of course, Sincil Bank was a tough place to go back then, and while all four sides of the ground have changed since he played, he has been back in his current role.
He has since been working as a pundit, and when we caught up with him earlier this week, we asked exactly how a team like West Ham, in their opulent if ill-fitting Olympic Stadium, should prepare for a trip to a real football ground.
“It’s always a tough place to go,” said Winterburn, who won Wimbeldon’s Player of the Season in 1983/84 season.
“You have to be ready to play a tough game and you know it’s not going to be Wembley stadium you’re playing at, but you still need to treat it as if it is.
“It’s so important to have the right attitude, mentality for any game, especially when you’re travelling to Sincil Bank.”
We’ll once again fill 95% of our ground every week, and it will be tight and hopefully intimidating for players. We might not realise it, but the ground is tight, the GBM Stand does have supporters on top of players, and it should be a weapon we use to snatch a few points from the big boys.
In fact, it is exactly how we almost took West Ham and Chelsea to a draw in the League Cup, narrowly losing against both on evenings of big atmosphere and intimidation at the Bank.
“The crowd are close, it can be intimidating,” added Winterburn. “You have to back yourself and your team mates to all have the right attitude to go and put in a performance and come away with three points.”
Winterburn, who became the first player to have a Wembley cup final penalty saved in 1988, confessed that many of West Ham’s games would be like that next season, as they settled into their role as the big scalp for second-tier sides.
“Many games now for West Ham will be like that where they will need to dig in, show their experience and class and then back in the Premier League,” he finished.
West Ham have been installed as early favourites for the title, while we are the rank outsiders, but as we proved in 2023, anything can happen with the right attitude and work ethic, and they’ll have to fight hard to stop themselves from becoming the next Leicester or Sunderland.
We spoke to Nigel Winterburn courtesy of William Hill News.
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