While the entire Aston Villa defence deserves credit after our 1-0 win over Brentford this weekend, one player stood out in particular with an outstanding performance.
After arriving in January, Axel Disasi has been asked to play a key role for Unai Emery, with our defensive options limited in recent weeks due to injury.
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That in turn has forced him to speed up his adaptation and settling-in process to an extent, while he’s also been asked to play on the right side of our backline in what is not necessarily his most comfortable or favoured role.
Nevertheless, the Frenchman has answered that call, and although we continued to struggle defensively through to our heavy defeat at Crystal Palace last month, we’re starting to see improvements after two clean sheets and having conceded just one goal in our last three outings across all competitions.
Disasi has played as our right-back against Club Brugge and Brentford respectively in the past week, and his performance this past Saturday evening was excellent as he not only added a colossal physical presence to limit their threat down our right side, but he made decisive interventions to deny Thomas Frank’s side clear goal-scoring opportunities.
He certainly wasn’t shy in expressing his feelings around those moments either, as the 26-year-old roared in delight after making his vital tackles, and that will no doubt only further endear him to the Villa faithful as he gives it his all while with us, albeit on a temporary basis.
Disasi ended the game with five clearances, one blocked shot, two interceptions, eight of 14 duels won, while he had a 73 percent pass completion rate.
“Yes, he’s adapting with us,” Emery said of Disasi in his post-match press conference. “When I spoke with him before he added us in the transfer window, I spoke with the position we needed to try to occupy with him, playing as a centre-back, playing sometimes as a four or three building up on the right side.
“He played before in other teams in this position and he accepted the challenge. Of course, when he played against Liverpool as a centre-back he played good. When he played as a right full-back at Palace and Brugge he was progressively getting better to try and get confidence. Today I think he went one step forward more, playing and succeeding better.”
Admittedly, an eyebrow was raised ahead of kick-off at the Gtech Community Stadium, as with both Andres Garcia and Matty Cash on the bench, we had natural right-back options at Emery’s disposal that would arguably give us a better balance across the defensive third.
Instead, the Villa boss opted for Disasi, and that decision certainly paid off given his performance in our win, and it would be a surprise to see him dropped now against Club Brugge in the second leg of our Champions League round-of-16 tie on Wednesday night.
Time will tell if Disasi becomes a permanent addition to the squad in the summer, but he’s undoubtedly starting to find his feet at Villa, and he’ll hopefully make the short-term impact that we needed from him at the very least.