Joao Gomes or Leon Goretzka? Unai Emery must solve Aston Villa midfield problem
After a rocky start to the season, Aston Villa have been trending up in the last couple of months, putting together a five-game unbeaten run in the Premier League and picking up important victories in the Champions League as well.
There is one important problem Unai Emery still needs to solve though, which is the balance in central midfield and specifically, whether Joao Gomes or Leon Goretzka provides the best answer alongside Boubacar Kamara.
Kamara has looked back to his best in recent weeks, but Emery has not settled on a consistent partner for him, and neither option has really stood out above the other so far.
It is especially noticeable given the quality of midfielders Villa have boasted in the last couple of seasons. Being able to pick between Kamara, Youri Tielemans and Amadou Onana was a real luxury, and if any combination of the two were playing, Villa stood a great chance of beating any opponent.
Emery has not even had the option of Goretzka for most of the season due to injury, giving Gomes the chance to establish himself in the starting 11.
Gomes had a terrible start, getting sent off on his debut, and although he has rounded into form, his exact fit within Emery’s system remains a bit unclear, and he certainly does not look stylistically similar to Tielemans, who he was theoretically brought in to replace.
Goretzka has tremendous pedigree after arriving from Bayern Munich, but at this point no one knows if he is close to the same player from previous years. He was unsigned until late August as a free agent after all.
The German started Villa’s last two games against Bournemouth in the Carabao Cup and Fulham in the Premier League, and did not exactly light the world on fire.
It may be a case of him needing time to get up to speed after an injury layoff which delayed his integration into the team, but there is a possibility he is not the answer Villa fans assumed he would be.
To contextualise the issue Villa are currently facing, the average WhoScored match rating of Kamara, Tielemans and Onana last season was 7.11, 7.03 and 6.91 respectively, in matches where they played at least 45 minutes in all competitions.
This season, Kamara is at 6.88, Gomes is at 6.55 and Goretzka is at 6.29 (admittedly in only two games).
From the standpoint of both quality and style, there are real questions over whether Villa have the ingredients in midfield to play the way Emery wants to and consistently control games in the same way they have done in previous seasons.
