Malick Diouf’s recent performances have been worrying, and there needs to be serious consideration about dropping him against Aston Villa next week.

El Hadji Malick Diouf has undoubtedly been one of the best signings for West Ham this summer, in fact, probably the Premier League, at least in terms of young players.

Overall, Diouf has had a good season for the Hammers. He looks very promising going forward; he’s got an excellent cross on him and is a good defender positionally and aerially for a full back. However, like every young player, he has his weaknesses.

Diouf’s biggest weakness is his one-on-one defending; he really struggles when a winger takes him on directly, it’s almost like he doesn’t know what to do, and we’ve seen this in the last two matches.

In the first half against Manchester United, Diouf really struggled with the pace and directness of Amad Diallo. The Ivorian knew Diouf’s weakness and just kept testing it, and he came out on top on almost every occasion.

This continued on the south coast against Brighton yesterday. against who was a better opponent in Yankuba Minteh. He didn’t necessarily tear Diouf apart, and the stats will suggest he had a decent game, but throughout the game, I was thinking he needs to come off for Walker-Peters.

Diouf is an excellent option for some games, but in games with excellent wide players playing for a team that is going to have more of the ball than us, Diouf can be a bit dodgy – and he was against United and Brighton.

Diouf will be going away with Senegal after our match against Aston Villa on Saturday, so after then, we will have no choice but not to play him, but who we will see at left-back will be interesting.

Wan-Bissaka is also going away with his country to AFCON, so naturally, his replacement will be KWP, a natural right back. So, who will play left-back in Diouf’s absence? It will probably have to be a youngster.

Ollie Scarles may not be back from injury, Ezra Mayers made his debut there vs Brighton, despite being a centre-back by trade, or could he decide to play Max Kilman or Igor out of position? While Diouf has been poor in recent games, he’s still going to be a huge miss.