With West Ham being unable to win a match, keep a clean sheet, or even competently defend, a lot of pressure and attention is on our limited supply of centre backs.
The stats paint our ‘defence’ in a damning light – one clean sheet this season, winning less than half our aerial duels, and conceding 41 goals in 22 games (that’s nearly two per game), all cementing us firmly in the relegation zone with escape looking unlikely.
The Stooges of 2026
The board have a lot to answer for, but blame is also being placed at the feet of the centre backs, as they seem unable to offer consistent and effective defending – as well as shocking individual errors to keep us and the opposition on their toes.
Messers Jean-Clair Todibo, Dinos Mavropanos and Maximillian Kilman have not fared well under the microscope examination of our defence. There’s also an Ivor Julio hanging around who is somehow being kept out of the squad by the aforementioned stooges.
Todibo and Kilman tend to be the default pairing, but fans’ frustrations have boiled over towards £40million man Kilman after a string of disinterested and sloppy performances in claret and blue. At the time of writing, he’s given away two penalties and recently forced Magassa into giving away a third. Let’s presume that by the time of reading, that number has grown.
For a team that insists on playing out from the back, his long passes have only a 27% success rate. He could be replaced by a tall potted plant without any major disruption to the team, and you’d think the plant would be far less likely to throw a foul.
Lessons from the Early 2000s
The present is bad viewing, but how do our current options compare to seasons past, particularly when it comes to relegation years for the Irons? Sure we’ve seen better – but have we actually seen worse?
My West Ham adventure is one of the mostly-modern era – I’m on a fast train to my forties, but only started living in London in the early 2000s, so my centre back collection is from time spent under some of the true greats of the West Ham’s history – Alans Pardew and Curbishly, and the revered Avram Grant.
Incredibly, it’s one of the first defensive pairings that remain a firm favourite to this day – the unlikely duo of wildcard Tomas Repka and a wholesome man who you’d let sh*g your wife, Christian Dailly. Repka was perhaps mildly unreliable, owing to a slight penchant for getting booked, but he was committed to a challenge and always put a shift in in claret and blue.
He was sent off on his debut for the club (two yellows, happens to the best of us), missed the next match through suspension, and then was given a straight red on his return. He also chain-smoked, his teammates were frightened of him, he’s done two stints in prison, and you’d still put him in the team over the current lot.
Dailly was the ying to his yang, and was a cult hero at the club during his six years in east London, for being such a positive player. He made 158 appearances and even racked up three goals. There was something about Dailly that wasn’t supposed to work, but it did, and his work ethic and dedication really endeared him to fans.
The Ferdinand and Collins Era
They weren’t the only notable legacy centre backs from that era at the club – lifetime Hammers ambassador Anton Ferdinand played in the same squad. Ferdinand spent five years with us, making 138 appearances and scoring five goals, producing strong tackles and a good understanding of the game around him.
Three competent centre backs at the club at the same time; we didn’t know how good we had it.
The following year life got even better in defence with the signing of Hammers legend James Collins. Never afraid to put the work in, or throw his body in front of a ball, this incredibly-hard working Hammer spent four years in his first shift at West Ham, with a further six years coming after a stint at Aston Villa.
When we talk about centre back pairings, Collins is an interesting one as he came as part of a pre-formed set. Collins and his centre-back partner at Cardiff, Danny Gabbidon, were signed by West Ham in 2005 as part of a package deal – and West Ham were insistent that it had to be both players, or none.
It was a clever idea to sign a pre-formed partnership, even though they were often split up for the inclusion of Ferdinand – and we finished 9th that year and qualified for the UEFA Cup. The duo cost £3.5m and went on to make a combined 310 appearances for the club. It’s a good financial return on investment, but unfortunately Gabbidon’s injuries kept him sidelined for long stretches of his career – including from December 2007 until August 2009.
The ‘Great Delay’ to Relegation
Another notable name of the era is that of Matthew Upson – but he failed to capture our hearts as much as his predecessors did. He is notable for being one of the few players to escape a great injury curse, for which he credits stuffing his boots with newspaper like a Victorian orphan.
Upson joined our relegation-threatened side in January 2007 and was part of the ‘great escape’ from relegation. In fact, it was only a ‘great delay’ to relegation – and things did not improve much as he ascended to the captaincy.
He became captain in 2009, faced a difficult season from 2009-10 in which we finished 17th, just five points above the relegated clubs, and then got relegated with the Irons in the 2010-11 season, at which point his contract expired and he left – as did his centre back partner Manuel da Costa, who made 35 appearances for us and somehow scored four goals – a better goals to games ratio than many of our striker signings.
Stability under Winston Reid and James Tomkins
A fresh start in the Championship with fresh legs seemed to be just what we needed. Do take heart from this, dear fans, as we look towards next season. The new approach of Sam Allardyce, Academy graduate James Tomkins, and future club captain Winston Reid (who had signed the previous year, but couldn’t get a solid run of games in the first team) took the club back to the Premier League on their first attempt.
Winston Reid was certainly a great of my era, playing 222 games in 11 years at the club, but his injuries (of which there were so many) did impact his ability to be the best of this era. He was excellent in the air and had strong leadership qualities, leading the team out as captain for many games.
He and the also long-serving Tomkins worked well together to provide us with stability in defence, with subsequent season finishes of 10th in 2013, 13th in 2014, 12th in 2015, and 7th in 2016 (gaining Europa League qualifications) before Tomkins was sold to Crystal Palace after a whopping 20 years at the club and 243 appearances.
The Road to Europe and Back Again
With investment and consistency in the centre back position, West Ham brought in options and gained consistency in the league – even though our goal difference was still poor.
In the mid-teens, we had Winston Reid, James Collins, Angelo Ogbonna, Jose Fonte and a very young Declan Rice to choose from, as well as two defensive midfielders who could also do a turn at CB, Cheikhou Kouyate and Havard Nordtveit. For a few years we finished 11th-13th before finishing 10th with a goal difference of only -3.
It was a year of progress, so the centre back position was naturally weakened the following year by sending Reid out on loan and not replacing him – leaving the club with just three senior centre backs. We dropped to 16th with a worse goal difference, skating relegation by just five points.
That threadbare season wasn’t a reflection on the players, more on the recruitment strategy. But this period also saw strong recruitment. Angelo Ogbonna was another West Ham player who far succeeded expectations – particularly as there were questions about how deliberate his signing was after the late David Gold tweeted a picture of Ogbonna when announcing the signing of fellow player Pedro Obiang a month before he joined the Irons. Ogbonna was one of our coolest cucumbers under pressure and looked forever unphased when pressed.
Issa Diop was also a notable name during this era, particularly when playing with Ogbonna, with Diop able to defend proactively while Ogbonna stayed slightly behind to clean up at the back. Both were tall, excellent in the air, and vital on corners.
The Peak: Dawson and Zouma
In the 2020-21 season, an at-the-time unpopular reinforcement joined – but no one at West Ham could have predicted just how valuable veteran player Craig Dawson would be in claret and blue. He put everything into his time in east London. Perhaps the hardest work ethic of any of our modern centre-backs and a willingness to completely throw himself in front of the ball made him an incredibly popular man at the club, and in the 2020-21 season, the combination of Balbuena, Dawson, Ogbonna and Diop had the club flying high with a sixth place finish and an at-the-time unheard of +15 goal difference, having only conceded 47 goals.
Kurt Zouma’s arrival helped keep us at great heights – the following season we finished 7th, retained a positive goal difference and, vitally, qualified for the Europa Conference League. Although the man ran like an injured giraffe, his calm demeanor and incredible ability to read the game was a gift to us. His off-field cat-kicking, less so.
The combination of Zouma, Ogbonna, and new arrivals – who didn’t go the distance in the long run – Nayef Aguerd and Thilo Kehrer became our most decorated centre-backs of recent history as the quartet that won the Europa Conference League.
A Future in Freefall
We should have gone on to do such great things after winning that trophy. Selling Declan Rice should have been a giant egg cracked to make one heck of an omelette. We should have strengthened, improved, pushed on – and yet the following season, we were a defensive mess, signing Dinos Mavropanos and going on to concede a club record 74 Premier League goals.
We sit in pole position to be relegated, with just three senior centre backs available, all of whom are out of their depth with no way back. We could do with any and all of the aforementioned former players in centre back position this season, and you can’t help but think that we would not be in the same position today with any of Collins, Reid, Balbuena, Dawson, Ogbonna and Diop available at their prime.
You cannot stay up if you can’t keep the goals out, and we could do worse than look to past failures to understand that threadbare squads can’t stay out of trouble – and well invested, well structured defences succeed.
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