Daily Mail<\/a>, Arsene Wenger had hoped to lure him across the capital to Arsenal. The aforementioned Spurs were also sniffing around. <\/p>\nSo it was a major relief to West Ham, and Collins, when Reid signed a new six-year deal just before the transfer window opened in 2015.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know he\u2019s my mate [but] I truly believe Reidy was one of, if not the best, centre-half in the league. Honestly, I truly believe that,\u201d Collins says, reflecting on an era when John Terry, Toby Alderweireld, Gary Cahill and Jose Fonte were at the peak of their powers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I\u2019ve said it before, probably after a couple of beers, but I\u2019m saying it. <\/p>\n
\u201cSome of his performances\u2026 he was single-handedly defending sometimes on his own. If I was having an off-day or whatever, where the team wasn\u2019t doing well, he was [the stand-out].<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not even lying. I think he was one of the best in the Premier League, if not the best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reid explains the injury which ended his Hammers career<\/p>\n
As it happened, Reid would end up seeing out the remainder of his career at the London Stadium. But not in the way he would have envisaged. A serious knee injury suffered during a heavy defeat by Swansea City in March 2018 helped bring about a premature and rather tragic end to his time as one of the Premier League\u2019s premier centre-halves.<\/p>\n
Reid did not even make a single appearance during his final four years as a West Ham player, until his contract expired in 2022.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember I got concussed and then, as I went down, my knee gave way. And that was it. We lost [to Swansea] that day, as well! All in all, it wasn\u2019t a great day!,\u201d Reid says. \u201cActually, the injury itself, it wasn\u2019t that bad. <\/p>\n
\u201cI tore an MCL which sounds bad, but it\u2019s not an ACL. It\u2019s normally three to four months [recovery time]. I had surgery, started rehab, but found out the screws they put in were a little bit too tight. I went for another operation to loosen the screws, and then we went on pre-season five or six months later.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember walking into the gym with the physio and my knee just gave way. I was just walking! Basically, there was a piece of bone in my knee which got dislodged from the injury, and it finally just came off. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think they said ten months or something. <\/p>\n
\u201cI had that operation, then I had another operation on it. By the time I came back, it was a year and a half I guess.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s part of the game. I was lucky. Up until 31, I didn\u2019t really have any major injuries.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During two spells at West Ham United, James Collins shared a dressing room with the likes of Mark…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,93945,19676,93946,221,101,56,54,55,93947],"class_list":{"0":"post-219693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-james-collins","10":"tag-john-terry","11":"tag-jose-fonte","12":"tag-premier-league","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom","17":"tag-winston-reid"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"James](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/GettyImages-158025102-1024x730.jpg\")
Photo by Scott Heavey\/Getty ImagesJames Collins says Winston Reid was a Premier League standout at West Ham United<\/p>\n