While Aston Villa were relatively quiet in the January transfer window, Unai Emery’s desire to sign Alex Moreno has proven to be an important move.
With Lucas Digne available to him already, some perhaps questioned the decision of a left-back being Emery’s first signing at the club, but it’s becoming ever clearer as to why he was so keen to bring in his fellow Spaniard.
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Moreno, 29, has now made 12 Premier League appearances, while providing two assists in those outings. While he was initially rotated with Digne and in and out of the Villa XI, he has now started our last six consecutive league games as he continues to establish himself as first-choice in that role.
The early signs were positive after he was forced into action sooner than expected as he replaced Digne against Leeds Utd in January after the Frenchman suffered an injury, and despite arriving just hours before that game, he put in a solid shift and gave us a glimpse of what he would add to the side.
Fast forward three months and we’re seeing Moreno’s influence grow in both phases, as he is shoring up his defensive displays and showing improvement in that aspect of his game, while continuing to provide an exciting new dynamic to our attack down that left flank.
In that six-game run of starts for Moreno, Villa have kept four clean sheets, while he provided an assist for Ollie Watkins against West Ham and continues to create chances for his teammates with his bursting runs forward into the final third.
As seen in the stats below, he is starting to really influence the game both defensively and offensively, while his energy, stamina, ability to provide width and an attacking outlet consistently is making a fundamental difference to how we play and how we break sides down.
Particularly against Nottingham Forest this weekend as they sat back and tried to frustrate us with numbers behind the ball, stretching the pitch and being able to break free around them down the flanks becomes all the more important, and that’s something we will have to learn and improve in as we continue to gain more respect from the opposition.
That makes Moreno a pivotal weapon for us, but he has to continue to balance that with his defensive duties too and in recent weeks, he has been doing a stellar job of it.
Given the dangerous positions he gets into, he’ll be disappointed that he hasn’t been able to pick out his Villa teammates more consistently to rack up his assists tally, but if he continues to find the right areas and works on that final ball and chemistry with the attacking players, there is much more to come from the Spanish left-back who is certainly already a fundamental part of the side and is proving to be an astute signing.
👏 @AlexMoreno during #AVLNFO:
77 touches
37 passes completed
4 tackles won
3 successful dribbles
2 chances created
2 clearances pic.twitter.com/kcK9UjTECt— Aston Villa (@AVFCOfficial) April 8, 2023