It wasn’t too much of a surprise considering the opposition, but Dean Smith will still be disappointed with the way his Aston Villa team played on Sunday.
The Villans were beaten 4-1 by Leicester City, who are second in the Premier League, but it could have been an awful lot more. The Foxes had 23 shots overall, of which eight were on target, with Jamie Vardy bagging a brace. The Midlands outfit are now 17th in the table, and only didn’t go into the relegation zone due to Newcastle coming from behind to beat Southampton.
There were several players who disappointed for the newly-promoted side, one of which was Marvelous Nakamba. The Zimbabwe international picked up an abysmal SofaScore rating of just 5.9. Such was his display, he was hooked off after just 59 minutes, being replaced by Egypt international Mohamed Trezeguet.
The Villa fans clearly weren’t happy with his showing, and they made their feelings known.
It clearly wasn’t the 25-year-old’s best display since signing from Club Brugge for £11m in the summer, but he has still been a regular for the Villans, starting 10 matches in the league so far. He hasn’t always been as disappointing, so there will be hope that this was just a one-off.
There was one aspect of his play that particularly annoyed the club’s supporters.
That seems a bit harsh on Nakamba, considering he had a pass accuracy of 90.5%. Only two starters for Smith’s team managed to register a higher number.
The defensive midfielder started in his favourite position against Brendan Rodgers’ team, with Douglas Luiz and John McGinn in front of him. There were a number of fans who believed this combination in the middle of the park to be one of their main problems.
With Luiz and the Scotland international picking up ratings of 6.2 and 6.8 respectively, it certainly wasn’t a good day at the office for the trio.
Red Herring or Real Hero: Only hardcore Villa fans will get all of them right….
After a difficult run of matches, Villa will now play four of the bottom 10 in their next five games. They will be hoping they can put some good form together and climb up the table.
In other news, one Villa man has special praise Dean Smith.
