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Ezri Konsa is proving to be Aston Villa's hardest player to replace
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- Ezri Konsa is proving to be Aston Villa's hardest player to replace
(IMAGO / Every Second Media)
Ezri Konsa is proving to be Aston Villa's hardest player to replace
Several of Aston Villa's summer signings have made encouraging starts, but Saturday's draw with Brentford highlighted why replacing Ezri Konsa could prove to be the biggest challenge of the club's rebuild.
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I've been really encouraged by what I've seen from a number of Aston Villa's summer signings so far, and Saturday's 2-2 draw with Brentford provided further evidence that we've brought some very good footballers into the club. Nicolas Jackson looks an excellent addition, João Gomes was probably my man of the match and Johan Manzambi continues to show why there's so much excitement about his potential. There are still things to improve, but I think there's plenty of reason to be optimistic about how this squad is developing.
One area where I'm not quite as convinced is central defence, and the more I watch Villa without Ezri Konsa, the more apparent it becomes just how difficult he's going to be to replace. We lost some outstanding players during the summer, but while the new arrivals are already beginning to demonstrate how they can compensate for those departures, I don't think we've found the same answers at the back.
Konsa was such a reliable footballer for Aston Villa, and perhaps his greatest quality was how much better he made the players around him. Tyrone Mings, Pau Torres and Victor Lindelöf have all enjoyed really good periods in a Villa shirt, but those spells have generally come alongside Konsa, and I don't think that's a coincidence.
He was an elite defender who could do so many different things well, and although he wasn't necessarily somebody who attracted the same attention as some of the more attacking players in the team, his consistency was such an important part of what Villa achieved under Unai Emery. You knew what you were going to get from him virtually every week, and I think we're beginning to appreciate just how valuable that was.
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At the moment, I look at our central defence and I don't really see a partnership that I'm completely comfortable with. That doesn't mean I think the individual players aren't good enough, because they've all demonstrated their qualities at different stages, but there's something missing in terms of the balance, reliability and understanding that Konsa brought to the team.
Tyrone Mings made a really poor mistake for Brentford's opening goal on Saturday, and there's absolutely no getting away from that. I was sitting in the Holte End and as soon as he gave the ball away in that position, my heart sank because you could almost see what was coming. Against a team as good as Brentford, you simply cannot afford to make those sorts of errors, particularly when you're trying to establish yourself in the game.
I know people will probably accuse me of defending Mings because I've always been a big supporter of his, but I think there's a difference between acknowledging a bad mistake and deciding that a player isn't good enough. Mings actually did some good things against Brentford, and I thought his general use of the ball was pretty decent. He's a better distributor than people sometimes give him credit for, and while Pau Torres is obviously capable of playing passes that can unlock an entire defence, I don't think the difference between the two in terms of their ordinary use of possession is anywhere near as enormous as some people suggest.
We also shouldn't forget that Pau has made mistakes himself this season, including in the opening game, and defenders are always going to have moments where things go wrong. My concern isn't necessarily about one individual making an error, it's about whether we've got the right combination of players to provide the defensive security that we had when Konsa was in the team.
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I actually thought Villa dealt pretty well with Brentford's physical threat for much of Saturday's game. They're a difficult side to play against, particularly with their long throws and set pieces, and I suspect one of the reasons Mings was selected was to help us deal with that. For the most part, we handled those situations well, but we've conceded two goals at home and the manner of both will be particularly frustrating for Unai Emery.
The second equaliser was arguably even more annoying because we'd just gone 2-1 ahead and should have been looking to manage the game. Instead, Kristoffer Ajer was allowed to advance through our team and get himself into a goalscoring position, which really shouldn't be happening. It was especially disappointing given how quickly we'd responded to going behind in the first half, because we'd effectively been given a lesson in the importance of reacting properly after a goal and then failed to apply it ourselves.
What also interests me is the situation with Taylor Harwood-Bellis. We spent around £30 million bringing him to the club during the summer, which isn't an enormous amount of money in the modern transfer market, but it's still a significant investment in a young defender who you'd imagine has been signed with a view to becoming an important player for Aston Villa.
Yet here we are, with Harwood-Bellis not even making the bench against Brentford, and I do wonder how he's supposed to develop into the player we need if he's not getting opportunities. I'm not suggesting Emery should simply throw him into the team regardless of circumstances, because we know how particular he is about players understanding exactly what he wants, but there has to come a point where we start seeing what Harwood-Bellis can offer.
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I actually wondered whether Saturday might have been a decent opportunity for him. Brentford are physical, they ask plenty of questions of defenders and Harwood-Bellis has that bit of aggression about him, alongside good distribution. It might have been the sort of game that suited him, although equally I understand why Emery wouldn't want to keep changing his central defensive partnership when he's trying to establish some consistency.
Lindelöf has been involved regularly, and he and Mings had done pretty well together against Tottenham, so there was logic behind keeping them together. But we already know Lindelöf is likely to be involved against Fenerbahçe in the Champions League, and I do think it's worth questioning how Harwood-Bellis is going to find his way into the side.
There is another factor in all of this, and that's Boubacar Kamara. I thought he showed signs of getting back towards his best against Brentford, even if he's still some distance from the level we know he's capable of reaching. He's such an important part of how Villa defend, despite not actually being a defender, and as he continues to recover his sharpness following injury, I think that will naturally help the players behind him as well.
The difference with Konsa is that Villa haven't brought in somebody who is ready to provide everything he gave us, and while Harwood-Bellis might eventually become an excellent defender, we're currently missing the reliability and defensive intelligence of a player who was consistently among the best in the team.
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We can look at Manzambi and see somebody who might eventually become an even better player than Morgan Rogers, albeit with different qualities. Jackson is already showing that he can score goals and contribute enormously to our attacking play, while Gomes looks a really good addition to the midfield. Those players are giving us reasons to believe that some of the qualities we lost during the summer have been replaced, and potentially improved upon, but I don't think we can say the same about central defence just yet.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if Villa make a significant investment in a centre-back next summer, somebody with both the reputation and quality to come in and immediately improve that area of the team. In fact, I think it's very likely that we'll look to make a major signing there because, for all the good work we've done rebuilding the squad, it's the one position where I still think we're noticeably short of what we had previously.
That's not to say we can't have a really good season with the defenders we've currently got, because I think this team is improving with every game and there's an awful lot to be excited about. I actually thought some of our football against Brentford was better than what we produced in the win at Tottenham, and we're beginning to see how good this new group could become.
But if you asked me which of the summer departures has left the biggest hole in Aston Villa's team, I wouldn't be looking at the attacking players or the midfielders. I'd be looking at Ezri Konsa, because replacing his reliability, defensive intelligence and influence on the players around him is proving to be a much more complicated job than perhaps we initially appreciated.
