West Ham United director of football Tim Steidten may well be coming to terms with the fact that he made a mistake with one of his signings for the club.
Tim Steidten arrived at the London Stadium in the summer of 2023, when he was announced as the new West Ham director of football.
The German had a big say in the appointment of Julen Lopetegui a year after his arrival in East London, and believes that the Spaniard is still very much the right man for the job.
The Hammers have made a slow start to the 2024/25 campaign. Weirdly, Steidten seems to be escaping criticism entirely.
That seems strange to me, considering the fact that he was behind eight of the nine summer signings, and all of the new arrivals the previous summer as well, allegedly.
Steidten has made plenty of top-class signings for West Ham, but he’s overseen some questionable deals as well.
And now I think he may have accepted that one of his signings for the Hammers is simply not quite good enough…
Does Tim Steidten accept £20m West Ham signing was a mistake
It seems to me that the German may well have realised that he made a big error back in the summer of 2023.
Steidten brought Konstantinos Mavropanos to the London Stadium from Stuttgart for £20 million 14 months ago.
It has already been claimed that the Hammers are open to selling the 26-year-old centre-back, and now even more weight has been added to that rumour.
According to a report from MilanLive, West Ham want to sign former Chelsea defender Fikayo Tomori from AC Milan.
The 26-year-old centre-back is a top-class player, and it goes without saying that he’d be a big upgrade on Mavropanos.
The Hammers were linked with Tomori in the summer transfer window just gone, and he’d be brilliant for us.
Tomori has been one of the standout centre-backs in Serie A over the past three years or so.
The former Chelsea man is incredibly strong in the air, and possesses decent pace. He’s an intelligent defender and his positional awareness is absolutely spot on.
So if we do sign the AC Milan star, could Mavropanos really be made surplus to requirements at the London Stadium?
Mavropanos is decent but needs to do more for West Ham
The 26-year-old is not the player we all expected him to be, despite the odd glimpse of his quality.
That said, I still believe that there is a top-class player in there somewhere.
He proved during his time with Stuttgart that he’s a very, very good centre-back, and he has all of the attributes needed to succeed in the Premier League.
However, there are some obvious faults with his game. The Greece international’s concentration levels are extremely suspect and his positional awareness is nowhere near where it needs to be.
Konstantinos Mavropanos has made numerous high-profile errors that have led to goals, namely during our clashes with Crystal Palace and Brentford last season.
The former Stuttgart man hasn’t been great this season either, with a really poor performance during our draw with Fulham drawing unwanted attention.
If Tim Steidten does bring Fikayo Tomori to West Ham in January, I think it may well be an admission from him that he got it wrong by signing Konstantinos Mavropanos.
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