West Ham United might have ended up on the wrong side of that seven-goal thriller against Tottenham Hotspur in 2007 but the day in which Carlos Tevez finally opened his Premier League account is still remembered by Alan Curbishley as a crucial turning point.
After 16 matches and over 1,000 minutes without a goal, the Argentine snapped up in a bizarre double deal alongside Javier Mascherano finally started showing the Upton Park faithful what all the fuss was about.
A beautiful free-kick got Carlos Tevez up and running in a West Ham United shirt seven months into his spell at the club. The rest, as they say, is history.
Former captain Mark Noble credits Tevez with saving West Ham’s skin that season. After 16 matches without a goal, he would then score seven in the next 13. Including, of course, a dramatic final day winner at Old Trafford against future employers Manchester United.
But while most of the credit for that ‘Great Escape’ goes to a striker who later won three Premier League titles on both sides of the Manchester divide, do not underestimate the role Alan Curbishley played in Tevez’s belated emergence.
West Ham United v Bolton Wanderers
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Alan Curbishley explains how he transformed Carlos Tevez’s West Ham United spell
Former Hammers left-back Paul Koncheskey uses the word ‘magic’ to describe Tevez in his claret and blue pomp. A genuine matchwinner, and one of the most talented footballers ever to represent the club in the Premier League era.
But the chances are that he would be remembered very differently if it was not for a piece of advice which sparked his late-season explosion.
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“It was quite simple. We had an interpreter attached to Carlos, and I sat him down one day and showed him the pitch. I divided it into three sections, the attacking third, the midfield third, and the defensive third, and I started giving him marks out of 10 for what he was doing,” Curbishley says on James Richardson’s Totally Extra podcast.
“I gave him eight out of 10 [for the] defensive third. I gave him nine out of 10 midfield third. And I gave him three out of 10 in the attacking third, because he was never in the attacking third!
“And I said to him, ‘how are you going to start scoring goals if you never go in the attacking third?’ I paired him with Bobby Zamora, and he started scoring.”
That prodigious work ethic would remain a key part of his game, of course. But, while Sir Alex Ferguson, Roberto Mancini and co obviously played a massive role themselves, Curbishley’s determination to simplify Tevez’s game and focus his attention on goalscoring proved to be as much of a turning point as that thrilling London derby against bitter rivals Tottenham on March 4th, 2007.
West Ham lost that game 4-3 despite leading by two goals heading towards the final ten minutes – Paul Staleri snatched all three points deep into stoppage time – but it was a performance which gave Curbishley, and his bottom-of-the-table charges, that an escape was possible.
“Tevez scored his first goal, which was incredible,” adds Curbishley, whose team would eventually finish in the relatively lofty heights of 15th. “It was the first time after the game that we got a bit of a shock, a bit of a telling off in the car park from the fans when we left the ground.
“But I was driving home thinking, ‘I don’t have many changes to make for the next game’. Obviously, the results were dreadful but that was the first time I was thinking, ‘I’m not going to do that much’.
“The Blackburn game, straight after the spurs one, we got a result. Then we were playing teams like Bolton and Everton, who were going for Europe, but we were beating them at home.
“I’ll tell you what I think the turnaround was. The players’ confidence had come back. I think we only used 13 players in those last nine games, whereas when you’re getting beat, you are chopping and changing. That was the big difference.
“I was seeing players doing things that they wouldn’t even attempt before we started that run.”