View: Coufal already looks like superb addition to West Ham defence
West Ham fans have been extremely frustrated by what the club has done in the transfer market since the end of last season.
We’ve seen young, up-and-coming academy products leave the London Stadium with Jeremy Ngakia, Grady Diangana and Josh Cullen all moving on. We’ve seen rival Premier League clubs splash hundreds of millions while David Gold and David Sullivan have failed to show any kind of ambition and, if anything, the squad is looking worse now than it was when last season finished.
However, we do have some hope with new right-back Vladimir Coufal impressing in his West Ham debut at the weekend when Alan Irvin led the Irons to a 3-0 win against Leicester City at the King Power with David Moyes still self-isolating at home after testing positive for COVID-19.
Coufal, 28, cost the Hammers just over £5million [Guardian] when he left Slavia Prague to join the London club last week.
He didn’t need any time to settle in and get used to life at a new club either as he was thrown straight into the starting line-up for what was seen as a very tough fixture against Brendan Rodgers’ Leicester.
However, Coufal didn’t look out of place at all against one of England’s most feared attacks as he made light work of defending against Harvey Barnes.
Stats by WyScout show that the Czech Republic international won both of the aerial duels he challenged for, completed eight interceptions and made 12 recoveries and six clearances.
Going forward, Coufal found a team-mate with one of his two crosses into the penalty area when he found Michail Antonio’s head in the second half and three of his five passes into the box were also accurate.
Coufal showed he can be a threat going forward as well as a force to be reckoned with in the defence for some of the Premier League’s top attackers.
We hope to see more of Coufal in the weeks after the international break is over, especially if he’s going to continue to play as well as he did against Leicester.
In other West Ham news, Gold has congratulated Lukasz Fabianski for his latest clean sheets.