By Louis Nixon
**West Ham fans aren’t happy as another shocking defensive performance leads to another defeat, leaving the Hammers on four points after eight Premier League matches.**
West Ham’s home defeat to Brentford summarised the pit of despair that the Hammers currently find themselves in, one which has led to us losing all the first four home games since 1931, all of which were conveniently London ‘derbys’.
Despite the game being an all-round disaster, if you had to pick your one-of-many talking points, you would’ve chosen how abysmal the defence was and how there’s quite literally not a single bit of positive news.
Jean-Clair Todibo lined up beside Killman for last night’s fixture, and between the two, they made 3 tackles, all 3 of which were made by Todibo. Yet you can’t let the tackle stat pull the wool over your eyes, because Todibo’s lacklustre performance and lack of coordination caused us to suffer last night.
As well as this, the remembrance of the Hammers spending £40 million on Max Kilman is a killjoy fact.
Garry O’Neil on Monday Night Football discussed Max Kilman, seeing as he was Wolves’ captain under him, and spoke about how Kilman often needs a ‘boost’ and can lose concentration a lot of the time throughout a fixture… that’s the starting defender we’re relying on digging us out of a relegation fight!
Despite spending around £70-£80 million on central defenders, we’ve ultimately ended up with a nightmare pairing and one that at this moment in time, could very well send the Hammers down.
To further add to the dismay of the playing defenders, Mavropanos came on at halftime in an attempt to close the hole in the defence, but his night would end up being taken off on a stretcher, now leaving the Hammers one less defender, nearing the most congested time period on the calendar.
The minimal bright sparks through Malick Diouf and Wan-Bissaka simply cannot be relied on considering the pair will be going away for AFCON, and as was noticed in the first half, Walker-Peters and Scarles struggled to keep up and were overrun by Brentford.
As Jamie Carragher said, we’re the slowest team in the Premier League, and it’s painful how much it implicates us across games… it’ll be interesting to see the line-up in three days’ time, but I for sure wouldn’t be starting the same defence, Malick Diouf and Wan-Bissaka simply have to start on Friday but they cannot be the only form of hope we rely on.