With a gruelling season ahead, Unai Emery will need his entire Aston Villa squad to step up when called upon to help maintain our consistency and competitiveness.
Villa are looking to compete across the Premier League, Champions League, Carabao Cup and FA Cup this season, and with that comes a hectic and challenging schedule that will test our resiliency, robustness and stamina.
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In turn, the key to being able to successfully navigate a path through the campaign is to have a squad that has strength in depth, and when fringe players are asked to come in, they must be able to fill that respective void and ensure that there is no significant drop off from the regular starter.
Diego Carlos found himself in that situation last month, as initially it was Matty Cash who was sidelined by injury before Ezri Konsa suffered a setback of his own.
The Brazilian centre-half stepped in against Wolves at the end of September to make his first league appearance of the season, and it’s fair to say that it didn’t go particularly well, nor did the next fixture away at Ipswich Town.
Carlos was guilty of making costly errors in both games, and that in turn led to some criticism and question marks being raised over his ability to be a reliable option to deputise when our starters are ruled out.
It followed on from heavy speculation over the summer regarding his future at Villa and a potential exit, and it’s fair to say that those doubts were exacerbated during that period despite Emery continuing to show faith in the 31-year-old.
To his credit, he has bounced back with a string of strong performances since, helping us keep clean sheets against Bayern Munich and Manchester United, before we saw off Fulham this weekend to continue our unbeaten run across all competitions.
We know what he’s capable of bringing to the side with his physicality and imposing presence at the back, but it’s the focus and concentration that has been questioned after being caught out of position or our defensive shape, or gifting possession cheaply to the opposition which risks conceding goals.
Importantly, Carlos has cut those mistakes out over the last few games, and he’s paired that with consistency in his defensive duties to give us a solid foundation on which we can build and win these games.
Fortunately, Cash has already returned while Konsa was named on the bench at Craven Cottage on Saturday afternoon, and so Villa are starting to get back to full strength. Nevertheless, Carlos is a great example of what will be required this season from our squad players, as everyone will have a role to play and they must be ready when Emery calls upon them to make their contribution.
