View: Aston Villa must expose Dean Henderson weakness as Leicester did
Monday night (10 October) will see Aston Villa travel to the City Ground to take on Nottingham Forest in the Premier League.
Steven Gerrard’s side has not lost any of their last three matches in the top flight and may well be fancied to make it four against the division’s basement club.
Forest were hammered 4-0 in their last match away at Leicester City who only had one point prior to that particular East Midlands derby.
In that game, Brendan Rodgers’ side were able to take huge advantage of a huge weakness in goalkeeper Dean Henderson’s game and Gerrard needs to instruct his players to do the same.
James Maddison’s first goal set the tone as Jesse Lingard failed to clear the ball on the edge of the area and the England World Cup hopeful lashed a fierce strike beyond Henderson.
A slight deflection may have been in play but the lack of ability to save shots from distance was evident and the Foxes pounced in packs.
Harvey Barnes was next to punish Henderson’s weakness from a very similar position and the same result occurred to double the home side’s lead at the time.
Neither of these strikes were hit with an enormous amount of power but the poor footwork of the keeper meant that anything placed in the corners was out of reach of the Englishman.
It wasn’t even something that was only occurring in open play as Maddison, one of the Premier League’s best free-kick takers, whipped a delightful dead ball into the top corner for 3-0 inside the first half of the game.
Philippe Coutinho and Aston Villa should be licking their lips at this problem and if they can expose it as Leicester did, it will be a comfortable win on the road.
In other Aston Villa news, Gerrard has hinted that he could be intending to make a change to his tactics to take on Steve Cooper’s side.