Angelo Ogbonna has been the ultimate professional in his six years at West Ham.
There was a period when he was seen very much as a likely departure after falling out of favour and was regularly tipped for a move away from the club.
That it didn’t happen was down to his his love of the Hammers and a refusal to accept that he was second or third best.
Indeed the only time when I can recall him complaining about anything was when he was left out of the national squad for the Euros.
As far as the Hammers is concerned he has never been anything other than ready to scrap his heart out and is now seen as the classiest central defender at the club,
At 33 he is obviously in the twilight of his career -m seven appearances of 200 short for the club – but he looks as good as ever and there are few who are more worthy of the current top of the table status than him
And talking to www.whufc.com he said: “This is the first time we’ve been top of the table since I’ve been here and it’s great!
We needed to change things a little bit and I think it’s good. We will enjoy the moment, but I think we’ll keep our feet on the ground. Of course, we want to get as many points as we can.
“I think it’s a great time to be West Ham. I’ve been here for many years and I’ve seen a lot of things changing and my relationship here with everyone is like a family.
When you’re in a family, you have good moments and bad moments, but you have to stick with it and you don’t give up.
“In every process, there are negatives and positives and that’s the way to get though things and this is the result of our process. I think all our fans are so proud of us.”
“I think we carried on from last season and from two seasons ago when we stayed in the Premier League,” he observed.
“We threw our best into our performance and everything comes from the performance, win or lose. The best way to do things the right way is to perform well, and I think we performed well and most of the time when you do that, you get the points.
“I would like to play with many leaders, and I think we have a lot of leaders in our team, not just one. When we talk about defensive shape, it’s not just the back four, but all the team, and when we attack it’s all the team.
“When we press, when we play out from the back, when we counter-attack, the speed that we had with Said, Mikey, Jarrod and Pablo as well, the did a fantastic job and that is what we want.”
Angelo has plenty of class and ability and has always been, a Top Class Defender. At a point, during his time here he selflessly played through the pain barrier with an injury that required an Op which took a little time to get up to speed after his comeback. He was written off then by a few people but he was treated poorly at times by Pelle who eventually came to realise when things started to fall apart for him that Angelo was the best central defender at this club. But we remain fortunate to have such a talented and steady central defender as the main anchor of our defence.
I’m not quite sure that Angelo would feel that he is in the twilight of his career though as he is Italian after all. Two words…..Giorgio Chiellini