Despite West Ham’s tough start to life under Julen Lopetegui, there have been a handful of positives to take from the opening couple of months of the season.
While there are still question marks over the Spaniard’s style of play, some of the summer signings have so far impressed.
Carlos Soler and Guido Rodriguez have both shown to be good additions to our midfield in stages, while Jean-Clair Todibo is now establishing himself as a top class centre-back. Further forward, there have been calls for Crysencio Summerville to get more game time after some bright showings off the bench.
But the biggest success story in terms of summer recruitment so far is the £40m acquisition of Max Kilman from Wolves.
Despite many originally believing we had overpaid for his signature, the centre-back is barely put a foot wrong since putting on the famous claret and blue for the first time back in August.
That is all despite the team’s disappointing performances so far this season and the fact we’ve conceded 20 goals in all competitions at a rate of exactly two-goals-a-game. Kilman has not been at fault for any of them and it’s fair to assume we may have conceded more had he not been in the team up to this point.
And this is something the analysts on The West Ham Breakdown Podcast touched on again this week, after raving about him in their episode two weeks earlier.
Both Jack Elderon and Cal Goodall admit that while it does seem strange single out the positive performance of a centre-back after losing 4-1 to Tottenham, there is nothing they can see in Kilman’s performances so far this season that suggests he is an issue in Lopetegui’s team.
They said: “He rarely puts a foot wrong defensively. He deals with a lot of situations that could have been so much worse had he not been there to intercept, to head out the box, to block on the last line, and then in possession. Wow. Wow.
“That moment where he came across the right centre back and just like pinged it on the volley straight through to Antonio. Who is this guy? He is outrageously good!
“There’s a moment where the ball comes back to him and he does a little jink to the left, beats one player, carries past another player and then knocks it out wide.
“When we were stepping high to press in the second half, and the counter press then became important because we were so advanced up the pitch, was he able to go forward, make a burst, get to something, make a tackle, keep us on the attack? Yes, he was. That side of the pitch was very well defended, and a lot of that was down to the performance of Maximilian Kilman, who was just sensational again.
“I was really impressed. I think he only misplaced one pass in the whole game, won 100% of his six ground rules. So, what you want from a centre back.
“Even in these trying circumstances, he is still trying to be the progressive force at the back and sort of trying to make things happen and doing it really well in the fleeting moments that we had that were positive in the second half.
“He still looks like a really good signing in spite of the result. I’m really pleased that he’s a West Ham player, really pleased that he’s tied down to a long-term contract, because I think he is only going to improve.
“It’s just a shame that the results aren’t matching the performances that he’s putting in because I feel for him, because he must be coming out of each game going ‘I didn’t really do much wrong today, did I?’”