Saturday, September 22

Have West Ham finally hit upon a centre back partnership?

One of the positives of the last two games has been that the centre back partnership has started to look much better. Even in defeat against Wolves, Balbuena and Diop both had effective games, and Diop in particular got in some great tackles. Diop was a little unlucky not to get across in time to prevent Traore's late winner after Cresswell was by-passed. After Issa's sliced clearance and own goal on his debut gifted the Gunners their second goal he's looked much better, and scored a cracking long-range effort at Wimbledon. 

The pairing will have benefited from the win at Everton. Sigurdsson lost Balbuena too easily for Everton's goal, but generally the General is making some good interceptions and tackles. I'm not convinced yet that he's better than Ogbonna or Reid, but he's clearly Pellegrini's man and is starting to improve. What's also helped immensely is having Declan Rice sweeping up in front of the pair, with Declan effectively becoming the third centre back in times of danger. 

Coming up against Morata or Giroud will be an interesting test for he pair against Chelsea. Let's hope we continue to see signs of improvement.

No comments: