West Ham United 95-97: Corinthian officially released 10 West Ham figures, those were Ludek Miklosko, Steve Potts, Tim Breaker, Julian Dicks, Tony Cottee, Slaven Bilic, Mark Reiper, Ian Bishop, Iain Dowie and Ille Dumitrescu. Robbie Slater came the closest to being released but production timings meant that he was replaced by Dumitrescu in most packaging formats that Slater was planned for. Dumitrescu was set for a release under Tottenham originally and kept his spurs base code. Of all the unreleased players, West Ham received the most masters which is a great shame that they did not come to release just 2 more players so that collectors could complete a 12 player stand. The unreleased masters were; Robbie Slater, Mark Bowen, Paulo Futre, Martin Allen, Florin Radiciou, Alvin Martin, Don Hutchison, Michael Hughes, Jon Moncur, Marco Boogers and Richard Hall (who was originally sculpted for Southampton). Iain Dowie and Slaven Bilic also received a Chelsea PL code - neither of these players were linked to Chelsea, this was likely a manual error as Chelsea received PL09 and West Ham PL19, meaning this error was likely the outcome of the person responsible thinking that as long as the code ended in "9" they couldn't go wrong - but they could (and they did). Much like Everton, Sheffield Wednesday, Man City and a few others, I've no plans to release a later kit since this strip spanned over two seasons, so like other clubs who fall under this category I will likely expand the squad to compensate and keep hammers fans happy.


















With 10 original squad members, 2 repaints and 12 Masters, this leaves no room for outfield player custom sculpts as all 24 slots are taken. This is certainly a relief to take a break from sculpting but eventually I would like to add some to the mix. All's not lost though, Harry Redknapp and Frank Lampard Snr will take the manager/assistant manager positions, both being the 2 custom sculpts needed.

Kit Facts: 

 

Achievements 95/96:

Premier League: 10th

FA Cup: R4 (4-1 aggregate loss to Grimsby Town)

League Cup: R3 (2-1 loss to Southampton)

 

Achievements 96/97:

Premier League: 14th

FA Cup: R3 (2-1 aggregate loss to Wrexham)

League Cup: R4 (3-2 aggregate loss to Stockport County)

Achievements: This kit spanned two seasons, from 94/95 to 95/96. Forest finished 3rd in the 94/95 season qualifying for the UEFA cup. They reached the 4th Round of both the League Cup and the FA Cup losing 2-1 away to Crystal Palace and 2-0 away to Millwall.

The following 95/96 season saw a dip in form mainly due to selling Collymore to Liverpool (for then a national record of 8.4 million) and injury spells to both Bryan Roy and Kevin Campbell hampered them further. Forest did reach the quarter finals of the UEFA cup only to be knocked out of the competition by Bayern Munich. They were narrowly narrowly defeated 2-1 in the first leg before being dismantled 5-1 and ending any further dreams of a European trophy (however they do hold the accolade of being the only English team left in the competition at this time). They only reached 2nd Round of the League Cup losing 5-4 on aggregate to Bradford City. They went further in the FA Cup though reaching the quarter finals but were knocked out in a 1-0 defeat to Aston Villa. This means that (despite their efforts) Nottingham Forest never won any form of Trophy whilst wearing this kit. 

Make & Sponsor: Wednesday's strip was made by Puma and Sanderson (English IT Software) sponsored them. The kit itself is very accurate but one mistake made was the red trim at the base of the shorts. This was supposed to stop where the red horizontal line meets the black vertical line, however Corinthian continued this all around the back of the shorts. Aside from this it's very accurate. Rather than paint the two thin white lines above and below the Labatt's logo (which was actually part of the kit), Corinthian decided to make this small detail part of the tampo print (something that should have been later removed for the 96/97 strip). The colours used were a very close match to actual kit.
Rating: 9/10

Pack Releases:
 

Single Blisters: All ten players were available in single blister format

4 Packs:
WH4A: Breaker, Potts, Cottee, Miklosko
WH4B: Rieper, Slater, Bishop, Dicks (unreleased)
WH4B: Rieper, Dumitrescu, Bishop, Dicks (replacement to original WH4B above in which Slater is switched for Dumitrescu)

12 Pack:
N/A