If there is one thing Nuno Espirito Santo is almost guaranteed to achieve in his new West Ham United home, it’s that the former Nottingham Forest, Wolves and Tottenham boss will bring about a dramatic defensive improvement.
Forest’s thrilling transitions may have torn many a Premier League backline apart last season, but their eventual Europa League qualification was constructed upon career-best campaigns for Nikola Milenkovic, Murillo and goalkeeper Matz Sels.
Sels even ended up sharing the Golden Glove with Arsenal’s David Raya.
The Wolverhampton Wanderers side which secured a seventh-place finish in 2020/21, meanwhile, boasted the fifth-best defence in the league.
Max Kilman credits Nuno with developing him into a fine central defender at Molineux. And speaking after producing one of his finest performances in recent memory, reunited with his old Wolves boss in East London, Kilman insisted that Nuno is only just getting started.
One suspects, over in Germany, Dino Toppmoller’s Eintracht Frankfurt training sessions will also see an extra emphasis placed on defensive organisation. While Nuno is prioritising set-pieces and overall shape at Rush Green, per The Standard, Toppmoller is under pressure to get one-time West Ham target Arthur Theate performing to somewhere near his peak again.
After conceding a staggering 13 goals in just three matches with the Belgium international at the heart of their backline – and as Nuno speaks out on the ‘big problem’ facing his team ahead of that Arsenal trip – there is no time like the present, for either Eintracht Frankfurt or West Ham.
West Ham United wanted Arthur Theate before he joined Eintracht Frankfurt
According to Fabrizio Romano, West Ham were trying to sign Arthur Theate as recently as July of last year. And after Frankfurt eventually won the race – they paid Rennes up to £16 million in the process – the Hammers’ loss looked very much like the Eagles’ gain throughout of Theate’s debut season in Germany.
The ponytailed powerhouse started 31 Bundesliga matches out of 34 as Frankfurt finished third. Qualifying for the Champions League in the process.
But pitted against Europe’s finest forwards, the weaknesses in Theate’s game have been exposed rather ruthlessly.
“Eintracht’s defensive woes are becoming increasingly dire,” local publication Hessenchau wrote after he and former Leeds stopper Robin Koch were dragged from pillar to post during the 5-1 midweek drubbing by Atletico Madrid.
“Robin Koch’s performance, astonishingly poor. Arthur Theate and Nathaniel Brown [left-back] fared little better.”
Of course, Theate is not the first defender to be given the runaround by Antoine Griezmann and Julian Alvarez. The manner in which one-time West Brom, Sheffield United and Millwall forward Oliver Burke took him to pieces in a 4-3 defeat by Union Berlin, though, was a lot more concerning.
“The high pressing forces them to defend much more space. Koch and Theate are monsters in tackling, both at the top level. But they’re not the fastest,” Bild explain, Toppmoller’s aggressive tactics leaving a sluggish pairing vulnerable to pacey operators like Burke.
“With more space, they’re much easier to get around.”
Theate’s Frankfurt beat Borussia Monchengladbach in 6-4 thriller
From the quality of the opposition’s finishing to Toppmoller’s tactics, Theate then has some excuses he can fall back on.
Though there was little excusing Frankfurt’s near-historic collapse away at Bundesliga basement dwellers Borussia Monchengladbach at the weekend.
6-0 up away from home with only 25 minutes remaining, Gladbach scored four unanswered goals in the blinking of an eye. Add those to the five scored by Atletic and the four netted by Union Berlin, and Theate has conceded more goals in his last three appearances [13], than the much-maligned Max Kilman and Konstantinos Mavropanos have since late-August.
West Ham moved on to Jean-Clair Todibo after missing out on Theate just over a year ago. Mavropanos and Kilman, £17 million and £40 million acquisitions themselves, have struggled to live up to their hefty price-tags at the London Stadium, as has the £36 million signing from Nice.
But, in a week when Burnley’s West Ham-linked Maxime Esteve gifted Manchester City two own goals at the Etihad, Theate’s similarly calamitous performances indicate that the grass is not always greener elsewhere.
“I do like Theate as a central defender,” German pundit Manuel Veth said on the Gegenpressing podcast, the one-time Bologna man clearly a defender cut from the same cloth as Todibo.
“He’s very good going forward but, defensively, I think he’s still a little bit suspect. I thought he played really well last season. In terms of his progressive passes and picking out passes into the final third and kind of setting up plays, he’s tremendous.
“But, defensively-speaking, [he and Frankfurt] are a bit of a mess.”
