With Aston Villa conceding seven goals in our last two Premier League games, Unai Emery has to fix a crucial issue ahead of a big week.
Villa face Lille in the first leg of our Europa Conference League quarter-final tie on Thursday night before visiting Arsenal in the Premier League next weekend, and as seems to be the case most weeks now we’re in the business end of the campaign, they could prove crucial to how our season ends.
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It will certainly be a cause for concern seeing our defensive frailties exposed over the last two outings, and particularly against Brentford, there was a common theme that emerged as a real worry in an area which was already under discussion.
Injuries haven’t been kind to us this season, and with Matty Cash once again sidelined, Ezri Konsa has been asked to fill that void at right-back and continues to show great versatility and sacrifice for the team to play as well as he can there.
However, we know that is not his most natural position, and we’ve seen him establish himself as one of the best centre-halves in the league on a consistent basis for some time now, with his partnership alongside Pau Torres helping to secure plenty of positive results earlier in the year.
Now though, as we await Cash’s return from a hamstring problem, with his recovery timeline put at two to three weeks by Emery after he initially picked up the setback on March 22, can the Villa boss change anything or does he have no choice but to persevere with what is his strongest option in an alternative role?
The answer seems more likely to be that Konsa stays at right-back until Cash is back, and we’ll have to learn from our mistakes this past weekend, which saw Sergio Reguilon provide three crosses into the box in the space of nine minutes, all of which ended with Brentford scoring.
“It was my mistake, I have to correct it,” Emery said after the game. “Because Reguilon crossed three times for three goals. I have to correct it.”
While the marking and defending inside the box was nowhere near good enough either, we have to be better at stopping the threat at source, and seeing Brentford cause us problems down that flank time and time again, raised further doubts and concerns over what was already a problematic area.
Konsa has played 13 league games at right-back so far this season, with Villa winning six, picking up five draws and suffering two defeats, while we’ve conceded 17 goals in those matches, seven of which came in the last two outings.
The system and set-up has worked to great effect at times too, never more prominently than against Man City and Arsenal in December. However, it doesn’t get the best out of Konsa, it disrupts the rhythm and settled nature of our backline and most importantly, it hasn’t always led to positive results.
Alternatively, can Emery realistically look to youngster Kaine Kesler-Hayden at this stage of the season to offer a temporary fix? With his lack of playing time and experience, it seems highly unlikely. So, although Cash doesn’t always entirely convince and has his detractors, his return will in fact be a fundamental boost for the balance of the team.
Villa confirmed the signing of Kosta Nedeljkovic from Red Star Belgrade in January, with the 18-year-old returning to Serbia on loan for the remainder of this season where he has made 26 appearances. Our rotten injury luck even stretches outside of the club walls, as he’s also currently injured with a knee problem and has missed the last 10 league games.
While he will add depth and competition in the right-back position moving forward, Emery has to find a short-term answer to ensure we don’t continue to ship goals at an alarming rate, and soft, avoidable ones at that where an opponent can identify a weakness and expose it multiple times in a matter of minutes.
