By Louis Nixon

Ahead of the Liverpool fixture, the lineups saw Max Kilman dropped from the squad for the first time since signing for the club. 

Whilst West Ham’s lacklustre performance is one that stings and feels like a missed opportunity, one decision that received much positive praise was the dropping of Max Kilman, who, across his last three fixtures, has made countless errors, and it was a breath of fresh air to see the defender not start against Liverpool. 

Whilst the game would still end 2-0 to Liverpool, his replacement in Mavropanos, had a successful game, achieving 10 defensive contributions, making four tackles, which is more than Kilman has had in his last six matches combined! Which truly does emphasise how poor of a defender he has been for us overall, it’s astonishing how long he’s remained in the squad for.

To provide praise towards a defender and credit him despite conceding two goals admittedly doesn’t feel correct, but just because Mavropanos conceded two to Liverpool, it doesn’t mean that suddenly we should put Max Kilman back in the squad on Thursday when we play Manchester United. 

Dropping the Englishman is a step in the right direction because he’s been appauling even in the scarce amount of victories we’ve had, perhaps previously we’ve been scared to drop him due to the price we paid for him, but sometimes you have to throw in the towel and it seems that in Nuno’s eyes, the Bournemouth game was the final straw. 

A 2-0 loss, but against Manchester United in just three days, I highly suspect the defence should stay the same, and more importantly, the two central defenders that started against Liverpool should continue to start for the foreseeable future.