[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=””]West Ham United looked weak at the back vs Millwall.
The Hammers’ central defensive pairing of Konstantinos Mavropanos and Maximillian Kilman have come in for quite a lot of praise so far this season.
The former mainly for his goalscoring; he already has four goals in seven Championship matches, including the late equaliser yesterday afternoon vs Millwall.
While the former, former Wolves defender Max Klman has been heavily praised for his improvement. His first two years at the club were just mistake after mistake; he became a scapegoat for the fans, and for good reason. However, this season he hasn’t done too much wrong.
As a defender, Kilman has been a lot better than the Greek international. In fact, I think Dinos has had more poor games than good games this season; he’s just being bailed out by his goals, which, to be fair, have been crucial for us already.
Not only has he made a couple of horrible defensive mistakes; the defending for Munetsi’s goal for Wolves against us stands out as the worst moment. He has also been bad in possession, which does ruin our game plan at times.
If Hermansen plays the ball out to Kilman, our build-up from the back is good more often than not. However, if it goes to Dinos, our attack often breaks down before it’s even started.
He either tries to play it into midfield but fails, as we saw on a few occasions vs Millwall, or plays it long to no one because we’re not trying to play those tactics.
He just can’t do that job of a ball-playing centre-back that well, and he looks back to being his clumsy self that made some of our fans boo him before he became a cult hero at the tail end of last season when playing alongside Disasi.
Don’t get me wrong, he hasn’t been poor enough to drop him in recent games, and his goals are massive for us. Both of them are definitely ‘good enough’ for the Championship, even a title-winning Championship team, which hopefully we become.
I just hoped both of them would be showing they are Premier League-level defenders, but they really haven’t been doing that so far this season.
This may be harsh on Kilman, who has actually been really good, but we know he’s not cut out for the PL, especially in a back four. Dinos can be, but he needs to start showing it in other places, not just in the opposition box.
It’s not a huge worry for now, but both will need replacing as starters in the event of promotion next summer as things stand in my opinion.
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