Mavropanos Heads West Ham in Front in 6-0 Rout at Lincoln

By Taki Panos

Some defenders wait a whole season for a goal. Konstantinos Mavropanos seems to find one every week. On Wednesday night at Lincoln, the Greek centre-back headed West Ham in front on the stroke of half-time, and the Hammers went on to win 6-0 in the Championship against a Lincoln side reduced to nine men inside 23 minutes, as Sky Sports reported. It was his sixth goal of the season, per Gazzetta, which is a striker's number from a player whose main job is still keeping the ball out of his own net.

For readers who do not follow English football closely, West Ham are playing in the Championship, England's second tier, this season and are chasing a quick return to the Premier League, as TA NEA noted in September. Mavropanos, a Greece international, joined them from Stuttgart in 2023 after an earlier spell at Arsenal, according to the BBC and the Premier League. He was not the only Greek defender making headlines in England on Wednesday, either. The same night, Kostas Tsimikas captained Liverpool and set up two goals at LASK.

The game turned early. Lincoln's Tom Hamer was sent off after just three minutes, and Conor McGrandles followed him 20 minutes later, per Sky Sports and the Guardian. Sky's report explained that Hamer lunged at West Ham right-back Joel Veltman, while McGrandles, as the last man, pulled down Jarrod Bowen after a wayward back pass. Two men up with more than an hour to play sounds like an easy evening. It rarely is, and for most of the first half West Ham made very hard work of it.

Lincoln sat deep and stayed compact, and the visitors kept firing shots from distance into a crowd of bodies. It took more than 37 minutes before Lincoln goalkeeper George Wickens had to make a save, hammers.news wrote in its match report, and Mohamadou Kante had already headed a Bowen corner wide, Sky Sports added. West Ham manager Nuno Espirito Santo admitted as much afterwards. "I think we made mistakes in terms of trying to rush things," he said, as the Guardian reported. Frustration was starting to creep in.

Then, as so often this autumn, the answer came from a set piece. Bowen swung in a corner at the very end of the half and Mavropanos headed it in from close range for 1-0, per Sky Sports and TA NEA, which put the goal in the 45th minute. hammers.news called it a goal from "the trusty head of Mavropanos" and praised the "dependable partnership" of Bowen and the Greek defender. It was a carbon copy of his goal in the 6-0 win over Wrexham in September, when he headed in a Bowen corner just after half-time, TA NEA reported at the time.

After the break, the dam broke. Half-time substitute Edvin Austbo curled a powerful shot into the top corner three minutes after the restart, Bowen made it 3-0 a minute later, and Pablo finished an Austbo pass for 4-0, Sky Sports reported. Tomas Soucek then came off the bench to score twice late on, per the Guardian and FotMob. FotMob counted 32 West Ham shots, 12 of them on target, and 82.8 percent possession. Lincoln were simply hanging on.

The scoreline carried some history with it. FotMob noted that the win equalled West Ham's club-record away victory, a 6-0 at Leicester City in 1923, and the Guardian called it the club's biggest away win for 103 years. West Ham's own match report led on the same point. It was also their second 6-0 league win of the season after Wrexham, per FotMob and TA NEA. That is promotion-contender form.

This goal did not come out of nowhere. Mavropanos was named the Championship Player of the Month for September after scoring four goals in five league games and helping West Ham keep two clean sheets, the BBC reported. He scored against Wolves, Bolton and Wrexham and headed the equaliser in a 2-2 draw at Millwall, West Ham World added. Nuno won the manager award for the same month. "I am delighted to win this award, but it was an excellent team effort this month," Mavropanos said, as quoted by the BBC and The League Paper.

Nuno, for his part, was fair to the opposition. "I credit Lincoln as even with one man down, they were in the game and still creating a lot of problems for us," he said, per the Guardian and Sky Sports. He also pointed to the moment the night changed: "It changed after the second goal and we played much better, in terms of being patient, recycling the ball and being clinical." That is the real lesson. Against a packed defense, patience matters, and so does a centre-back who attacks corners like a striker.

The win lifted West Ham to third in the Championship with 19 points from 10 games, according to the Guardian's table and Football Web Pages. Swansea lead on 23 points and Middlesbrough are second on 21. West Ham have lost just once in the league so far, and their 29 goals are the most in the division, along with the best goal difference at plus 17. Not bad for a side that started slowly in August.

My take: six goals from a centre-back before the end of October is not luck, it is a skill. Mavropanos reads the flight of a corner early, gets across his marker and attacks the ball, and with Bowen delivering, West Ham have a routine that can hurt anyone in this league. I would not expect him to keep scoring at this rate all season, because defenders who start scoring soon get marked a lot tighter. But in a promotion race, goals from the back win the tight games, and those are the ones you remember in May.

Next up is the big one. West Ham travel to leaders Swansea on Saturday, October 17, with kickoff at 15:00 UK time (17:00 in Greece), according to the BBC fixture list and FotMob. A win there would cut the gap at the top to a single point. For more on Greek players doing the business abroad, keep an eye on our Greek Sports section. Dinos keeps scoring. Long may it last.

Sources: Sky Sports, The Guardian, Gazzetta, TA NEA, FotMob, BBC Sport, West Ham World, The League Paper, hammers.news, Football Web Pages.

Image: Konstantinos Mavropanos warming up for West Ham at the London Stadium in 2023, by Egghead06, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).