West Ham defender Jean-Clair Todibo has gone from failed signing to crucial player in a matter of months.

At the start of the season, fans were getting tired of the French defender. After his first season of bad performances and injuries on repeat, we all thought we had wasted £40m on the player.

However, over the past couple of months he’s turned his Premier Legaue career and completely, and has been a huge part of the Hammers’ turnaround.

Towards the end of 2025, into 2026 the Frenchman has been fantastic. He’s finally becoming the centre back we all thought we were signing, the one we had to try so hard to sign him before Juventus did.

He’s now full of confidence which has brought out the best version of Todibo, he’s aggressive, excellent on the ball and is no longer a liability in the air.

Him and Konstantinos Mavropanos have formed an excellent partnership, tbey played really well together from the QPR win in the FA Cup to the disappointing Chelsea loss, they impressed before that but the results still weren’t coming.

The Chelsea match was a howler for everyone, 2-0 up and losing 3-2, however, it was worse for Todibo as he got sent off for shoving Joao Pedro.

Since Todibo’s ban, fellow Frenchman Axel Disasi stepped in for Todibo alongside Mavropanos and they looked just as good together keeping three clean sheets in five matches.

However, after suffering a 5-2 defeat to Liverpool at Anfield, Nuno decided to drop Mavropanos and play Todibo alongside Disasi for the first team against Fulham. As a partnership, they were absolutely immense.

They dealt with Raul Jimenez so well, in fact they completely marked him out the game, which is excellent because he’s been is tremendous form as of late.

In my opinion Todibo was man of the match against Fulham in what was his first start in five matches, an excellent decision from Nuno to bring him back in from the start.