MARTIN KEOWN TALKS TACTICS: Amadou Onana slotted beautifully into Aston Villa’s midfield to give balance – it was a surprisingly excellent debut
- Amadou Onana enjoyed an superb debut for Aston Villa at West Ham last week
- The 23-year-old Belgium midfielder joined Villa from Everton for £50m in July
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It doesn’t have to be love at first sight when you pull on the jersey of your new club.
I grew up at Arsenal and when I tried on my Aston Villa shirt after signing in 1986, I barely recognised the 19-year-old staring back at me in the mirror. It was a shock to the system, a move of my own making but one I’d never expected to happen.
Of course I grew to love Villa, even as we went through three turbulent years, before I eventually found my way back to Arsenal via Everton. Some new signings can adjust in no time at all, others take longer. Amadou Onana surprised me with an excellent debut for Villa. Their £50million record signing dovetailed seamlessly into midfield alongside Youri Tielemens at West Ham.
Unai Emery is a coach of incredible detail. They have meetings about meetings at Villa because he wants to feed extensive information to his players and Onana showed why he was the only new face trusted to start last Saturday.
Not only did he score inside four minutes, he played exactly the way Emery wants. Villa form a box of four in midfield, with John McGinn dropping inside from the left to play in front of Tielemens and Morgan Rogers playing in the pocket in front of Onana.
Amadou Onana (centre) scored his first goal for Aston Villa in a 2-1 win at West Ham on debut
But it was not just the former Everton star’s goal that saw him impress at the London Stadium
After beating the Hammers, Villa will now host Arsenal in their next Premier League fixture
Lucas Digne pushes high on the left to fill the gap left by McGinn, leaving Villa with a back three, while Leon Bailey moves into central positions in support of Ollie Watkins. In possession, both centre backs run with the ball, as Pau Torres showed at West Ham.
It is a streetwise XI with every man capable of winning his one-v-one duels. Even if Arsenal can dominate the ball on Saturday, they need to be wary of Villa’s pace on the counter.
Villa won home and away last season, striking a major blow to Mikel Arteta’s title hopes.
That will be looming large in the minds of Arsenal’s players and they will not be short on motivation on Saturday. They have brought in Riccardo Calafiori, are looking at Ademola Lookman, and are on the verge of signing Mikel Merino. Arsenal are striving for excellence as they bid to overtake Manchester City, but face a tough task at Villa.
