Aston Villa boss Unai Emery has delivered his verdict on Youri Tielemans when asked about the Belgian’s best position in the side.
The 26-year-old arrived on a free transfer last summer, and after impressing in pre-season, expectations were high as to how much of an impact he would be able to make for us after what was an astute piece of business.
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However, that was followed by a slow start to the campaign as Tielemans struggled to showcase his quality and settle in his best position, and the knock-on effect of that was a limited role.
Barring a stint on the sidelines due to injury in December though, the Belgian international has established himself as a key figure in the Villa squad now, making 37 appearances across all competitions, scoring two goals and providing five assists.
Injuries and suspension have ensured that he’s likely to continue in a central midfield role in the next two league games with Boubacar Kamara and John McGinn unavailable, but his biggest influence has come when playing in a more advanced role behind Ollie Watkins.
That’s where he impressed for Belgium over the international break too, and so it will be interesting to see where Emery deploys him moving forward to get the most from him in a critical part of our season, with the Spaniard asked about his player in his pre-Wolves press conference.
“We try to exploit his best potential as a player: his skills, his capacity to assist, his capacity to get into the opponent’s box with his clarity, sometimes scoring goals. We try to avoid his weaknesses,” he told the media, as per VillaTV.
“With us, more or less, he’s playing like he played with his national team. We can speak about him with numbers – six, eight, ten – he’s a mix of those.”
Emery does have the option of playing talented youngster Tim Iroegbunam in midfield alongside Douglas Luiz, which in turn would allow Tielemans to play further forward.
However, given the experience and technical ability that they possess between them, having Luiz and Tielemans in midfield, and perhaps with Moussa Diaby supporting Watkins in the final third, that feels like the more likely route that the Villa boss will take to give us the control he desires in games.
That will raise question marks though as to whether or not we’ve got enough physicality and tenacity in that midfield battle, potentially exposing one of the weaknesses that Emery was talking about trying to avoid, and so time will tell what he believes gives us the best chance of winning, starting against Wolves on Saturday evening.
