Clement Lenglet may be set for last Aston Villa appearance v Zrinjski Mostar as January exit mooted
Aston Villa have already booked their place in the knockout stages of the Europa Conference League, but Unai Emery’s side have one final group stage clash on the horizon against Zrinjski Mostar.
Villa travel to Bosnia on Thursday (14 December) looking for three points to secure their place at the top of their group, but it feels likely that Emery will rotate his side after a busy week of Premier League action with games against Manchester City and Arsenal.
One man who will almost certainly start at the heart of Villa’s defence is Clement Lenglet. The Frenchman has been a regular feature of Emery’s side in Europe this season, but Thursday’s match may be his last chance to earn a Premier League start.
Against Legia Warsaw in Villa’s last Europa League clash, Lenglet shone in Emery’s defence, especially in possession where he completed a whopping 93 per cent of his 84 attempted passes in the match [Fotmob].
Six of those efforts were into the opposition’s final third and the 28-year-old demonstrated his excellent range of passing, completing four of his seven attempted long balls. To top it off, the Barcelona loanee beat the press with his only attempted dribble in the match.
This has been a key feature of Lenglet’s game in Europe where he has been one of the competition’s best defenders when in possession. He sits in the 96th percentile of his positional peers for passes attempted per 90 minutes, averaging a whopping 85.4 a game [Fbref].
92.5 per cent of those efforts have found a teammate and an average of 5.2 of them have been labelled progressive. Only 17 per cent of centre-backs have been more progressive than the Aston Villa star as he has almost acted as an extra midfielder when in possession.
Out of possession, it was a much quieter afternoon for Lenglet who didn’t have too much to do against Legia, but whenever he was called into action, he stood up to the challenge. The French international won possession in three of his four duels and made four ball recoveries in the match.
Given Aston Villa’s dominance in the Europa Conference League, the 28-year-old hasn’t been required to do too much work in defence this season, but has still lost less challenged than 79 per cent of defenders and has tackled 80 per cent of the players that have attempted to dribble past him.
If Lenglet can produce another special performance on Thursday night, it may just be enough to earn the Frenchman a first Premier League start of the campaign, but anything short of a perfect display will likely see him continue to be ignored domestically by Emery.
Should he fail to make a Premier League appearance before the January transfer window opens, he may well consider his options, especially with reports emerging that Bayern Munich would be interested in signing the Frenchman.
There is a good chance Thursday’s meeting with Zrinjski Mostar could be the last we see of Lenglet in an Aston Villa shirt.
In other Aston Villa news, Alex Moreno has the chance to become Emery’s first-choice left-back against Brentford after Lucas Digne was suspended