Sign up to FREE email alerts from Football London - West Ham Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Fabian Balbuena deservedly picked up the man of the match award for West Ham in their 2-0 win over Fulham at the weekend as the defender dominated Aleksandar Mitrovic and was generally immense.

The 27-year-old arrived in the summer to little fanfare considering some of the other signings the club made during their £100m spending spree after Manuel Pellegrini took charge - he didn't even get one of those fancy unveiling videos that other players and even West Ham's "e-sports" signings recently, did.

But you get the sense that the South American centre back wouldn't give a hoot.

Balbuena just doesn't care for things like that and doesn't seem to care for Premier League forwards either as he's proven to be an astute £4m purchase from Corinthians in Brazil, a move made by director of football Mario Husillos that has certainly struck gold.

Balbeuna is no nonsense, uncompromising, straight forward and tough as nails. He's forged a great partnership with Issa Diop alongside him, the Frenchman also cost nearly £20m more when he was snared from Toulouse in the summer, and while clean sheets have been hard to come by for the duo it shouldn't diminish how impressive they have been.

(Image: IAN KINGTON/AFP/Getty Images)

Xherdan Shaqiri at Liverpool is being hailed as the bargain signing of the summer for £13m from Stoke, but Balbuena and also £7m keeper Lukasz Fabianski should be getting more recognition.

As always though, Pellegrini keeps things in check, saying of Balbuena and Diop after the Fulham win: "Are they the bargain of the season? All those evaluations, we need to do that at the end of the season.

"They are improving a lot, especially Issa Diop because he is a very young player. I think they are two very important players. They needed to know the Premier League before they started having a good performance."

Diop has been a little way down from his optimum performances for the past two games, not that he has been bad whatsoever, but Balbuena has cleaned things up for him. Diop has a tendency to go and chase the ball to win it, his centre back partner stays back and mops up if the youngster gets turned.

The duo embraced at full time on Saturday after just their third clean sheet of the season. The home side had 16 shots on goal but just four on target as they found the brilliant Fabianski in their way. After Aboubakar Kamara latched on to Mitrovic's fine pass early on but fluffed his lines, Balbuena and Diop got their act together.

(Image: Warren Little/Getty Images)

In a little poetic irony, at the other end of the pitch and struggling a bit was Alfie Mawson. The Cottagers defender, part of a backline that has conceded 42 goals this season, was heavily courted by the Hammers in January and this past summer with the Londoners having a £20m bid rejected before he eventually left Swansea for Fulham.

Pellegrini settled on Balbuena instead and it's not even close to work out who has got the better end of the two transfers so far. At 27, Balbuena is in his peak, his physical prime, and it's showing.

He's missed just one Premier League game this season thanks to injury, has formed a blossoming partnership with Diop and despite having never played in the English top flight before, is flourishing and it's going completely under the radar away from east London.

That's probably just how Balbuena likes it.

Keep up to date with the latest news, features and exclusives from football.london via the free football.london app for iPhone and Android .

Available to download from the App Store and Google Play .