Anyone even remotely au fait with the characters West Ham United fanatic and acting legend Ray Winstone tends to portray on film will not be surprised to learn what brand of footballer he usually gravitates towards.
Unfortunately for everyone’s favourite Hollywood ‘hard man’, this is not a Hammers side overloaded with your Julian Dicks’, Tomas Repka’s, Martin Allens’ or Billy Bonds’.
Max Kilman is ‘soft’, ‘passive’, and arguably no one sums up West Ham United’s recent decline better than the £40 million signing from Wolves.
According to Data MB, Kilman has won only 18 per cent of his aerial duels this season. For Jean-Clair Todibo, that percentage drops to just 11.
Charlie Cresswell will be West Ham’s best defender…😍
How can Nuno convince him to join?
No wonder the Hammers have conceded so many goals, then, from crosses, corners and dead-ball situations.
Todibo has improved since Nuno came in, but the aforementioned Tony Gale pulled no punches on a ‘horrendous’ defensive error during the 2-1 defeat by Nottingham Forest. Todibo completely missed his attempted header, and Forest scored from the resulting corner.
So Winstone is bang on the money when he says West Ham are missing a Craig Dawson. You know, someone to rough up opposition strikers like Winstone does gangsters, and someone willing to put his head in where it hurts.
Ray Winstone wishes West Ham United had a Craig Dawson or an Angelo Ogbonna
The Homerton-born Winstone pines for the days of a Dawson – Angelo Ogbonna partnership.
During their Hammers heyday in 2020/21, the powerhouse duo helped West Ham secure a sixth-placed finish while conceding only 47 goals in 38 Premier League games.
With Kilman, Todibo and Konstantinos Mavropanos – a trio who set the club back just shy of £100 million – the Hammers have let in 43 in just 21.
So for all the promise showed by Mateus Fernandes, for all of Crysencio Summerville’s driving runs and Tomas Soucek’s headers, relegation seems a certainty for as long as Kilman, Todibo and Mavropanos remain Nuno’s defensive options.
“For me, you look through the team and they all look like good players, you know,” says the two-time BAFTA nominee on talkSPORT. “Since he’s come, [Mateus] Fernandes has been a good player.
“I love the fact that Soucek comes on because he gives you 100 per cent every time he plays. And little Summerville [against Nottingham Forest], 100 per cent, never stopped trying.
“I like the look of the two new centre-forwards we bought [Taty Castellanos and Pablo Felipe]. They looked all right.
“[But] our defence obviously has got a problem. What we’re lacking in the side is emotion. I think there’s a real lack of emotion. You look at the players’ faces, they never seem to change, you know?
“You’ve gotta get yourself going, patting one another on the back, pushing players around, telling players what to do. There’s a real lack of that going on within the team and that’s the worrying thing for me.
“What would you do in the back there? Bring someone like a Dawson back or Ogbonna, players who actually were old-fashioned centre-halves. That’s what they’re kind of missing. All this tippy-tappy at the back is lovely, but when you need a cruncher, that’s when you want someone like Dawson and Ogbonna at the back there. We’re really missing that.
“You can go back to the 70s and the 80s and all that, but those days are over. [The goals we concede are] absolutely diabolical.
“You’re talking about a manager now who was a goalkeeper [Nuno], who supposedly knows about defending, but the coaching for the defence seems to be appalling.”
Charlie Cresswell and Tiago Gabriel are on Hammers wishlist
On a more positive note, this is a weakness the club are trying to fix.
Charlie Cresswell of Toulouse remains a key target going into the next three weeks of the window. At 6ft 3ins, Cresswell wins 75 per cent of his defensive duels, compared with Kilman’s 18 per cent and Todibo’s 11 per cent.
Lecce giant Tiago Gabriel is an option under consideration, too. The Portuguese powerhouse is actually even taller than Cresswell.
Roggerio Nyakossi was linked this week by The Sun as well. OH Leuven’s 6ft 4ins colossus certainly wouldn’t appear out of place as hired muscle in one of Winstone’s gritty flicks. Nyakossi, while also stylish and effective in possession, averages 4.1 clearances per game in Belgium. Coincidentally, the same number Dawson managed during the 2021/22 campaign at the London Stadium.
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