Black History Month Players: Andy Impey

 As October is Black History Month in the UK, I will spend this month publishing threads on X (formerly Twitter) on certain players who have been part of a long and distinguished line of Black representation at West Ham United. With this being the second year I have undertaken this exercise, I thought it would be fair to publish a blog post for those who don't have X or find threads on the platform difficult to read. Feel free to read last year's threads, via this link,  but this post and today's thread on X is on Andy Impey. 

Born in Hammersmith on the 30th of September 1971, Impey grew up in Harlington in West London where he was the third eldest of nine children (yes, nine!) and was an avid sportsman who was talented at football and tennis. Impey admitted that he could’ve played at a decent level in tennis when he was selected for a trial to play at county level, but in his own words “couldn’t be bothered” as football was always his first love, with this love rewarded with an apprenticeship contract with Wimbledon.

However, the apprenticeship lasted mere weeks as Impey left academy football at Wimbledon & got a job as a window fitter whilst playing non-league football with local side Yeading.  Impey claims that while he had no interest in getting back into football at first, but was inspired to do so when encouraged by his youth team manager at Yeading, Alan Burke, where his effort was rewarded as he broke into Yeading’s first team soon after this conversation. This was soon followed by scouts from multiple clubs across London and the south of England appearing at games to watch Impey, but ultimately he signed with fellow West London club QPR for around £30,000.

Signing with QPR at 18 in 1990, Impey would eventually break into the QPR team in October 1991 against Norwich, shortly after his 20th birthday. Impey would spend 6 years at Loftus Road, where he became a club legend as the first player to win the Player of the Year award 3 years running between 1993-1995. Although he could play at left-back or left-wing, Impey played in the latter position, where he was part of an all-black front three with future Hammers Les Ferdinand & Trevor Sinclair in a QPR side that often finished in the top half of the Premier League in the early 90s.

During his time with QPR, Impey was touted to be selected for England, although this was eventually underwhelming for him as he’d only make one appearance for the under-21 team before a senior call-up in 1995 saw him not selected for the side, before never being selected again. Whilst Impey would have now been eligible to play for Jamaica, the nation of his fathers birth, the FIFA rules on changing national teams was different in the 90s and due to his solitary appearance for the under 21 team, Impey was denied the chance to play international football, where he would have no doubt excelled playing for the Reggae Boyz. 

However, by 1997, QPR had been relegated and their stars like Impey were looking to move back to the Premier League, which happened when West Ham paid £1.2 million for him in September of 1997 leaving QPR after making 228 appearances & scoring 18 goals in all competitions.

Impey would spend 11 months with the Hammers, where he’d only make 34 appearances, due to constant small injuries plaguing him during his time in East London before moving to Leicester in November 1998, following a bit of internal drama at the club that surrounded his move. The drama in question involved then managing director of the club, Peter Storrie, who negotiated a 1.6 million pound deal for Impey with Nottingham Forest behind then manager Harry Redknapp’s back. Redknapp & Storrie even temporarily fell out over it despite normally being the best of friends. This disagreement came from the fact that Redknapp wanted to keep Impey at the club, whereas Storrie wanted to sell him for a profit after an injury-plagued year. Impey, who never wanted to leave West Ham, was caught in the middle and would eventually be made to leave the club.

However, there was more drama as to where he would end up. Whilst on his way to Nottingham to sign for Forest, Impey was rang by Frank Sinclair, then at Leicester, who told him: “Whatever you do, don’t sign for Forest!” & as we now know, he didn’t, signing for Leicester instead.

On a side note, despite signing for a club in the Midlands, Impey would continue to live in London, travelling up to Leicester every day with his teammate & West Ham legend Tony Cottee, who has also continued to live in London as well after his move to the Foxes in 1997. Impey would spend 6 years at Leicester, making 176 appearances at the club, scoring twice, also earning a winners medal in the League Cup in 2000 after being denied a runners-up medal in 1999 due to being cup-tied after playing for West Ham in the same competition that year.

In 2004, Impey would join Nottingham Forest on loan, scoring 15 seconds into his debut after coming on as a substitute, ending a goal drought for the club that had lasted 7 league games & was the first league goal scored by Forest in 2004 and also Impey’s only goal for the club. Helping forest avoid relegation that season, Impey would sign permanently with the club that summer, making appearances in the 2004/05 season. However, Impey’s tenure at Forest only lasted a year as he moved from the East to the West Midlands, signing for Coventry City in 2005.

However, during his spell with Forest, Impey would go on loan at Millwall. Impey, being from London & knowing his footballing rivalries, asked Millwall’s then assistant manager, the late Ray Wilkins that all-important question, which was: “How can I play for Millwall, when I played for West Ham?”. Wilkins replied that he and then Millwall manager Dennis Wise had both played for Chelsea, another of Millwall’s fierce rivals and had been accepted, so Impey would be too. After this brief spell at Millwall and after leaving Forest, Coventry would be the last club that Impey would play for in his career, where he would appear sporadically, making appearances on a non-contract basis, before retiring from football in 2006 at the age of 34. 

Since retiring, Impey has kept a fairly low profile (it is unknown if he ever returned to his previous career of window fitting), before returning to football in 2015 with the club where he made his name in QPR, joining as an academy coach and where you can still find him coaching today.

Thank you for reading today’s post! Today’s sources were Brian Belton’s ‘The Black Hammers’ and this interview from 2020 with Impey by Leicester City Club historian, John Hutchison:

https://www.lcfc.com/news/1646956/former-player-remembers-andy-impey/featured?lang=en