Blast from the Past no.52: Chris Kiwomya

Reviving the Premier League players you forgot existed…

The early 1990s were a simpler time. No internet, no Brexit and no need for everyone to be so cool all the time, a fact demonstrated by the hottest double acts of the era: Charles and Eddie, Hale and Pace and Dozzell and Kimomya.

Speak to kids these days, and they probably won’t even know who any of these people are. Their greatness was but a fleeing moment in time. But if you were going to sit a child down and explain to them the magnificence of just one of these forgotten duos, it would have to be the footballing one.

Comedy and music may go horribly out of date, but a telepathic partnership between midfielder and attacker is timeless.

While Jason Dozzell was a couple of years older than his fellow Ipswich Town academy graduate Chris Kimomya, they peaked together - and in the Tractor Boys’ promotion season of 1991/92, the pair were unstoppable.

“Kimomya’s pace and Dozzell’s passing ability constituted a huge amount of our goal threat that season,” recalled one fans on the TWTD forum, while another hailed the duo’s “amazing understanding”.

It brought John Lyall’s entertaining team a combined 35 league goals - 19 for Kiwomya and 16 for Dozzell - to secure top spot in the old First Division and a return to the top flight after a six-year absence.

And this was no normal promotion year, because the carrot for the champions was a place in the first ever Premier League season.

Kiwomya marked his arrival in the big time by giving Town the lead at Old Trafford against eventual champions Manchester United (with a little help from an uncharacteristic Peter Schmeichel error), before scoring a 90th-minute equaliser against Liverpool three days later.

Another goal in the East Anglian hate-match against Norwich sealed a famous 2-0 derby win as the Blues reached the lofty heights of fourth in the table at one point.

“He never seemed to hit the ball hard when he scored as it always seemed to be a clever flick or dink as his pace got him there first,” noted one Tractor Boy.

Kiwomya also became known for having the washing instructions label frequently popping out of the back  of his shirt (it was never clear whether this was a mistake of a style choice) and his skill at winning penalty kicks.

“He fell over in the box a lot,” said one fan, while another remembers Kiwomya giving the away fans “a knowing nod and a wink” after taking “a bit of a tumble” in the box to win a spot-kick at Coventry.

In an era where the Premier League had just 11 foreign players, he also sounded exotic, even if he was born in Huddersfield.

“When he first turned up on the scene no commentators, be it radio or TV, could pronounce his name properly. I heard just about every possible pronunciation of his name, some that just weren’t possible,” said one Ipswich fan.

There was no such trouble in the stands at Portman Road, where the song, “Kimomya my Lord, Kiwomya” (to the tune of Kumbaya) became a popular refrain.

Kiwomya scored 10 goals in his top flight debut season (with Dozzell adding seven) as Ipswich eventually finished a highly satisfactory 16th in the table (Norwich were third, annoyingly).

But at the end of the season, the deadly double act was broken up - and neither would ever recover. Dozzell’s £1.9m move to Tottenham in August 1993 was not a roaring success for either party, but it had a knock-on effect for Kiwomya too.

The striker scored just five league goals the following season and three the year after that as the Tractor Boys plunged towards relegation. In January of that campaign, Arsenal snapped him up for £1.25m.

On the plus side, it meant he missed the infamous 9-0 defeat by Man Utd. But there weren’t many other positives to take from his move to Highbury.

Despite a promising start to his Gunners career, including a brace in a 3-0 win at Crystal Palace, the club was soon thrown into turmoil when George Graham left amid a bungs scandal. Kimomya had been the Scotsman’s last signing.

“It was strange. When George was there, people at Arsenal were nice to me but when George left you could see the change in some of them,” Kimomya once said.

He spent the next two seasons being ignored, sometimes for Dennis Bergkamp (fair enough) but sometimes for less legendary figures.

“Christopher Wreh played a number of games but I was never used. I was at my peak and playing in the reserves,” said Kiwomya.

Arsenal’s loss was Selangor’s gain.

Kimomya was farmed out on loan to the Malaysian club, where he formed an unlikely yet deadly strike partnership with ageing former West Ham star Tony Cottee.

Perhaps the best existing YouTube footage of Chris Kiwomya features him taking advantage of the slackest marking in the history of football to score the winning goal in the Malaysian Cup final in front of 80,000 screaming fans.

But mainly, that stint showed that Kimomya still had plenty left to give. After being released by the Gunners at the end of their 1998 double-winning season (no appearances and therefore no medals for Chris), he moved to QPR.

He was a regular starter at Loftus Road,  notching 25 goals in three seasons, before seeing out his career in the Danish league.

But it’s at Portman Road where they remember him best, and most fondly.

“Kimomya was arguably Ipswich’s best ever Premier League era player. He was sharp, quick, knew how to finish, could play in a side playing good passing football and also wasn’t shy of working hard and fighting out points in more defensive set-ups, which is why we both won the Championship with him and stayed in the top flight for the three following seasons,” said another fan on TWTD.

“He should have never joined Arsenal, much like when Dozzell jumped the gun and joined Spurs.”

Just like Charles and Eddie and Hale and Pace, what Dozzell and Kimomya had in common is that they gave each other strength. Alone, they were not nearly so powerful.

But the story doesn’t end there. Jason’s 17-year-old son Andre Dozzell is currently making waves in the Ipswich first team, while Chris’ 20-year-old nephew Alex Kiwomya is at Chelsea. This great forgotten double act could yet make a comeback.

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