Having already made a decisive impact on our season, Aston Villa ace Bertrand Traore potentially now has a major opportunity to cement his place in Unai Emery’s plans moving forward.
The 27-year-old scored in consecutive Premier League games last week, firstly securing all three points with a late winner at Leicester City, before providing an all-important breakthrough against Nottingham Forest this past weekend.
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As our pursuit of European football gathers pace, those are potentially two major moments in our season, with Traore producing a decisive impact off the bench in back-to-back outings to keep our good form going.
That’s also two goals in just 118 minutes for the Burkina Faso international, and now with Leon Bailey sustaining an apparent hamstring injury, there could be a more prominent role ahead for Traore in the coming weeks.
While Bailey has been struggling with a lack of confidence and poor form for some time now, he has continued to play an important role in the collective performance, and Emery evidently rates him highly given the Spaniard has stuck with him and shown faith in his ability to make a bigger impact.
That ultimately hasn’t materialised, and now with the injury setback that could sideline him, it opens the door for someone else to come in and be more influential, and Traore is surely now top of the pecking order to deputise.
Despite Philippe Coutinho still being out with an injury issue of his own, Emery does have another option if he chooses to speed up Jhon Duran’s integration, or perhaps when Boubacar Kamara returns, we’ll see Jacob Ramsey or more likely Emiliano Buendia move further up in support of Ollie Watkins.
However, Traore has certainly staked his claim and done his chances no harm with his impact over the past week, and it’s a brilliant turnaround for him given he was shipped out on loan last year and deemed surplus to requirements by previous management.
Having returned from that loan stint in January due to injury, Emery saw something in him that could help provide a solution to our need for more quality on the right wing, and that decision to keep him around until the end of the season has paid off for now as he has provided big contributions.
Time will tell though if he can be consistent with that, as if Bailey is indeed sidelined and Traore gets a starting berth, he’ll have to show more quality beyond his goalscoring to be an effective and threatening part of our attacking play as well as putting in a shift defensively to help the team maintain our brilliant recent defensive form.
The suggestion has been that Traore was perhaps a shorter-term fix to give Villa competition and depth in that area of the squad until the end of this season, and that we would ultimately look to go and sign our priority targets in the summer having failed to sign anyone for that role in January.
Traore could now have a big opportunity to ensure he’s part of the plans beyond this season if he can build on his crucial impact thus far and continue to impress in his second chance at Villa.
Can Bertrand Traore play his way into a key role for us beyond this season, or do you think he’s still a short-term fix and Emery will look to sign a top target in the summer?
Keep Berti. He seems to have a great attitude and lots of skills. He can be great cover for our new right winger signing next year. I’ve heard it said that he can also play the #9 and that might be one of the reasons Emery brought him in after Ings was no longer here. It made sense that he could add cover for Ollie, with the young Duran learning his lines. I had been wondering how BT would perform under UE, and I guess this is my answer.
I would also like to give props to UE for his smart move to establish Ollie as the #9, by shipping Ings. He knew that would empower OW and how it has. UE is walking on water.
Always rated Bertie, should be a first choice.