By Louis Nixon

West Ham’s defeat to Nottingham Forest on Tuesday night wasn’t just an underwhelming defeat, but one where fans could really view the true weakness that the club are facing with defensive troubles. 

Nuno Espirito Santo made one defensive change tonight to the starting squad, which was replacing Max Kilman with Mavropanos, which was much needed, but unfortunately, it still wouldn’t result in a win, as the weakness in the defence tonight was Areola, which isn’t typically the person who’s at fault for the errors.

But, barring Areola’s attempted clearance in the box, the defence looked sluggish the entire match, and it is solely due to the frequent poor backing as well as executive transfer decisions that were made.

Tonight, we played with Mavropanos who had put in a decent performance, but nect to him, despite having a good game, it was easy to notice that Todibo wasn’t 100% fit and wasn’t up to tempo, he looked as if he’d lost a yard and it makes you realise that Nuno decided to start an injured Todibo over a fully fit Max Kilman, that says enough. 

West Ham has no other centre-backs at the club at the moment, which is a significant issue, but this isn’t the only department it’s occurring in… it’s also with the fullbacks! I understand that both Wan-Bissaka and Malick Diouf are away at AFCON, but Ollie Scarles was struggling tonight; he was left for dead with Todibo beside him!

Was he expected to mark three players on his own whilst making forward runs? It’s certainly not a surprise to see him taken off, but he was taken off for Mayers, who plays on the other side! We have no depth available, and it’s placing West Ham in fragile positions. It would’ve been nice to have a certain Italian wingback who plays in the Champions League. 

Walker-Peters has been holding his own at right back and has managed through his small injuries accumulated over this winter period, but the fact that we aren’t able to provide the opportunity for these players to have rest is a shambles. Recruitment is needed, given either by the number of injuries we have, or the lacklustre quality of players that we own. 

One way or another, new players have to be brought in, but considering our current league position, it’ll certainly be a hard sell to convince anyone to join.