Farewell The General

It's not a surprise that Fabian Balbuena has been released as he's in his thirties and was on a good salary. But even so I always quite liked The General. He was an underrated payer and one of Pellegrini's better signings. To get a PL centre back for £3.5 million was good value. Yes, there was always a mistake in him, but he was also a good reader of the game and made many telling interceptions, playing in the side that finished tenth in Pellegrini's first season. 

And let's not forget that he played regularly for the first half of last season, up until Dawson's debut at Southampton. Fabian was in the team that beat Wolves 4-0 and then Leicester 3-0, the games that started WHU's charge up the league. And he also scored the first goal at Spurs that started our epic comeback. 

Mind you, it was a little strange that when he did score his three goals for the Hammers he never gave us his famed General's salute, which seems to have been appropriated by Pablo Fornals. But Fabian has been a good pro with West Ham and I'd like to wish him good luck wherever he now ends up.

You don't know what you're doing!

So Fabian Balbuena's red card has been rescinded, predictably enough. Not much use to West Ham though, when the points have been lost against Chelsea. The dismissal can only have been rescinded by looking at the VAR footage, which makes it all the more baffling that two referees agreed with the original decision in the first place. Sometimes in football you get caught by a kicking leg, there's no getting around that. Time for some common sense at Stockley Park.

In praise of the General

Good to see that Fabian Balbuena recently made it into the Guardian's list of top ten underrated players in the Premiership. The piece has some revealing stats, including the fact that Balbuena is fourth in the Premier League for interceptions and third for clearances. While only Anderson in the West Ham side has made more passes. Fabian has also weighed in with a goal at Leicester and is forming an effective partnership with Issa Diop. 

The General always looks remarkably calm and seems able to take the ball off strikers in an almost casual manner. At £3.5 million he's certainly one of the bargains of the season. The Irons could still do with a younger right back and a better defensive left back than Arthur, but in Balbuena, Diop and Fabianski a strong central unit is starting to emerge. 

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.

The General and Prince Felipe arrive

And still the signings keep coming. First it's Fabian Balbeuna from Corinithians, the Paraguayan centre back who is nicknamed The General (which should go down well with the ICF) and has his own goal celebration. Today comes the real statement signing, Felipe Anderson arriving from Lazio for a massive £36 million. It really will be just like watching Brazil and I like the fact that he started out at Santos, Pele's old club. 

I'm almost thinking it's time to stop now seven signings have been made, as we don't want to destabalise the existing squad too much. But credit at last to Sullivan and Gold. The Burnley match protests seem to have shocked them into some big spending — around £100 million so far. Players will need to be shipped out too. But with Fabianski, Fredericks, Diop, Balbuena, Wilshere, Yarmolenko and Anderson it's going to be an exciting season. We might even be too good to go down…