West Ham United’s centre-halves have faced their fair share of criticism but, say what you want about Konstantinos Mavropanos, Max Kilman and Jean-Clair Todibo, at least they haven’t been hit for six this season.
True, the Hammers have come close.
Chelsea put five past Graham Potter’s side in August, albeit when Nayef Aguerd was still to awake from his Premier League nightmare. Mavropanos and Todibo were in top form during West Ham United’s valiant 2-1 win at Tottenham last time out but, still, no team in England’s top flight has conceded more goals in 2025/26.
How would you rate Jean-Clair Todibo’s performance for West Ham vs Tottenham out of 10?
In my mind, that’s his best game yet?!
But if Nuno Espirito Santo thought that Eric Dier was a silver-bullet solution to those well-publicised defensive deficiencies, his ‘disaster’ of a performance alongside former Hammer Thilo Kehrer on Tuesday night shows that the grass is not always greener elsewhere.
When Real Madrid and Kylian Mbappe are in town – the Los Blancos superstar hit a brace on his return to the Principality – the last thing you want is to make life easy for them. That is exactly that Monaco did, however, as Dier and Kehrer gift-wrapped a crushing 6-1 Real victory.
In the process, consigning Monaco to the biggest defeat in their Champions League history.
Eric Dier and Thilo Kehrer in Real Madrid humiliation as West Ham United eye defensive signings
According to Sky Sports, the England international rejected a Nuno reunion last week.
Ally McCoist wondered aloud on talkSPORT if the Hammers had dodged a bullet. The Rangers legend might have had a point. Dier by name, very much dire by nature.
“A disaster. Yet another one,” Maxifoot wrote while giving Dier a lowly match rating of 2/10. Monaco have now conceded 12 Champions League goals in the three games in which he has featured in the competition this term.
“He got off to a terrible start, forgetting about Mbappe leading to the first goal, and he failed to track Vinicius on the second. And the former Bayern Munich player, who should have been using his experience today, never managed to recover from this dreadful start.”
Kehrer scores own goal in Champions League thrashing
If Dier was poor, Kehrer was even worse.
The former Paris Saint-Germain stopper, who spent two years at West Ham from 2022 to 2024, diverted the ball clumsily into his own goal as Real Madrid stormed into a 4-0 lead before the hour mark at the Santiago Bernabeu.
“Thilo Kehrer endured a nightmare,” write Eurosport. Even at 29, the mistakes which littered Kehrer’s West Ham stint remain in his game.
“The German scored an avoidable own goal from a Vinicius cross that, while dangerous, wasn’t impossible to deal with. For Real Madrid’s opening goal, he was part of a remarkably passive Monaco defence, from Caio Henrique to [Jordan] Teze and Eric Dier.”
Charlie Cresswell will be West Ham’s best defender…😍
How can Nuno convince him to join?
Surely West Ham can do better than Dier with Charlie Cresswell still a target
While Mavropanos and Todibo have surely established themselves as Nuno’s most reliable centre-back pairing for the time being – well, until new additions are made with Toulouse giant Charlie Cresswell the dream signing for many supporters – Dier and Kehrer would be fortunate in the extreme if they start another Champions League match together in 2025/26.
“It’s difficult to explain in the heat of the moment after the match, but it simply wasn’t a good game for us,” a dejected Dier told reporters after a performance which surely ended any interest West Ham may have had.
“We’re obviously very disappointed, and there’s not much else to say. We just need to try and understand what went wrong, especially when you lose by that score. It means a lot of things didn’t work. We now have to digest this and move on.
“I’m obviously very disappointed in myself, but everyone has to be self-critical; that’s the most important thing.”
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