On the day Jack Grealish completed his move to Manchester City, chief executive Christian Purslow won widespread praise for his detailed breakdown of the £100m transfer.
Villa were left with little choice when Manchester City offered a British record fee, one which activated the playmaker’s release clause. The softening blow was the additions of Emiliano Buendia, Danny Ings, and Leon Bailey, whose arrivals had already hinted at the club captain’s departure.
“It was never our intention to replace Jack with one footballer,” Purslow insisted. “Our strategy was to analyse and break down Jack’s key attributes – his creativity, his assists, his goals – and to find these qualities and others in three forward players.
“In signing Buendia, Bailey and Ings, we believe we have achieved this key objective. And in doing so, have also reduced an over-dependence on one brilliant footballer.”
Over-dependence was one way of putting it. By the point Grealish was injured in February of last season, Villa had been winning 50 per cent of their Premier League games. Without him, that figure dropped to just under 36 per cent. In his absence, they won just three league games until he returned.
This is hardly news. Losing their talismanic creator, an England international who lit up the European Championship even at the most fleeting opportunities, was always going to prompt a change in dynamics. Villa no longer move the ball up the pitch as they once did and it follows then, that in the first half alone against Arsenal, they conceded 14 shots.
It is not as simple as lacking the imagination of a midfielder who could nonchalantly swap wings, create space in behind the main target man, and score goals from seemingly innocuous situations. Dean Smith’s side have lost their coherency with the ball but they also lack much shape without it.
Where Villa rank in the Premier League (per 90 minutes)
- Goals – 8th
- Shots – 15th
- Shots on target – 13th
- xG – 13th
- Fouls drawn: 1st
Via FBref.com
With Villa ranked eighth for average distance from goal for all shots take, they are still heavily reliant on the No 10 behind Ollie Watkins and Ings – typically Buendia. their record signing. Inhibited by a hip injury he is yet to rediscover the kind of freedom and space which made him such an asset in Norwich’s last full Premier League season and which made the Canaries so desperate to keep him for a further year in the Championship. Missing games due to his involvement with the Argentina national team at a time when the country was on the UK’s red list hasn’t helped either.
Since a muted debut in the 3-2 defeat to Watford, the one occasion when he really lived up to his former billing was on the right side of a 4-1-4-1 against Brentford. It’s a system Smith has toyed with and one which should, on paper, resemble more closely the shape which allowed Bailey to flourish on the left at Bayer Leverkusen.
The 24-year-old is yet to make a league start and has played a total of 131 minutes, mitigated to some extent by the fact that he is a young player who has already had to adapt to playing in three different countries and had injury niggles of his own.
Ings has managed to plug the gap best with three goals and two assists (Buendia and Bailey have one goal apiece, with the latter contributing two assists). Even that has been offset by Ollie Watkins, the club’s top scorer last season, scoring just once, in the 2-1 defeat to Tottenham.
The responsibility of replacing a player of such individual brilliance is not theirs alone. Anwar El Ghazi has also had a mixed start to the campaign and Bertrand Traore might have offered more had his early season not been interrupted by a thigh injury sustained on international duty with Burkina Faso.
On current form, though, Villa’s aspirations of filling Grealish’s shoes in one summer window are not being achieved.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/31ag0sJ
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