View: Leon Bailey stats should worry Aston Villa as poor form continues
Leon Bailey’s habit of giving the ball away is costing Aston Villa as the club struggles through a poor run of form.
Villa have lost their last two games in the Premier League, shipping seven goals in the process.
The real sickener was the 4-2 home loss to struggling Leicester City (4 February), which suggested thoughts of top-flight safety may be slightly premature.
Bailey, 25, started that game and Sunday’s (12 February) 3-1 loss to Manchester City but struggled to impose himself in both instances.
Against Manchester City, fair enough. But against that Leicester team, that’s so poor.
Taking a look at the stats from those games, one stands out. That’s Bailey’s pass completion rate. Against Leicester, he registered the lowest pass completion rate in the entire team, by quite some distance, 68.4%, as per WhoScored.
The next lowest completion rate of any player who started the match was Lucas DIgne’s 81.3%. That’s quite a drop-off.
It gets even worse in the Man City game as Bailey only completes a shocking 57.1% of his passes. In a game where you are already up against it, against the Champions, on their turf, you can’t give away half of your passes. You just can’t.
It could be forgiven if Bailey was causing City all kinds of problems, running at the defence and creating chances. But he wasn’t.
As per WhoScored, he was dispossessed three times against Leicester and failed to register any shots or any successful dribbles against Man City.
We are still waiting to see the best of Bailey following his high-profile move to the club in the summer of 2021.
In 39 total Premier League appearances he has scored five goals, with four of those coming this season.
There have also only been four assists and, yes, while Bailey hasn’t had the best options around him, he should still be able to produce more on his own.
You can’t help but feel if he did the basics right then we would see a stronger end product from the Aston Villa winger.