As he continues to battle for a bigger Aston Villa role, Emiliano Buendia will be buoyed by his positive cameo appearance against Leicester City this weekend.
The Argentine playmaker was introduced in the 76th minute, and although his end product was missing as he twice went close to threatening the goal, his energy and intensity certainly made an impact as we pushed for a winner and subsequently looked to kill the game off.
READ MORE: Influential Villa figure proving to be every bit the astute signing for Emery
After his brutal injury blow on the eve of last season, the 28-year-old has had a gruelling battle to get back to his peak condition, and while that process is almost complete, he’s still lacking match fitness and sharpness having been limited in his minutes so far this season.
The Carabao Cup was a key competition for Buendia as he started in both of our games before we exited the competition, and those remain his only starts this season as he’s made 15 appearances in total, scoring one goal.
With his current contract set to expire in June 2026, it’s a big six months or so for the Villa man as he looks to secure his long-term future at the club, but if he isn’t able to get on the pitch and show what he can still contribute, it’s going to make it more likely that Villa look elsewhere and try to upgrade our squad.
With that in mind, there is a fear that Buendia is running out of time and games to secure his future, but what his brief appearance this weekend will hopefully have done is to earn him a more prominent role against West Ham Utd in the FA Cup next week, and perhaps even a starting berth.
Particularly with the way that Leicester City set up on Saturday afternoon as they defended deep and in numbers to frustrate us, we lacked any creative quality in the final third to prise them open and pick holes in their disciplined and organised defensive structure and shape.
With Morgan Rogers ruled out due to suspension, it felt like the ideal opportunity to bring Buendia in and give him a real run-out to settle, get up to speed in the game and have a positive influence.
While that didn’t materialise, this was still an important 15 minutes or so for him, as he drove us forward, applied pressure in the final third to give us more intensity and urgency, and he got into good positions to at least have those attempts on goal.
That positional awareness is key and it shows he hasn’t lost it, but the missing piece is of course adding an end product, and hopefully that comes on Friday night when we look to advance in the FA Cup, as with West Ham possibly looking to adopt a similar approach, Buendia’s creative quality could be decisive in ensuring we don’t encounter the same problems and frustration as this weekend.
