Aston Villa v Fulham: Clement Lenglet torn to shreds by BBC pundit
Efan Ekoku tore Clement Lenglet to shreds in the Aston Villa v Fulham clash at Craven Cottage on Saturday, 17 February, which ended 2-1 for the visitors.
Villa looked like they were cruising to victory with a 2-0 lead, but the Frenchman made an error which saw the hosts halving their deficit.
He had a lapse in concentration and did not communicate with Emi Martinez which saw both of them attempting to go for the same cross played in by Antonee Robinson.
Rodrigo Muniz capitalised on this and ended up slotting the ball into the back of the net, much to Unai Emery’s annoyance.
Ekoku, a BBC pundit, who was commentating on the Premier League World Feed said (17 February, 16:27): “Terrible defending at the near post there from Lenglet. Martinez and Lenglet should be doing better. That’s just a real steal.”
Lenglet puts in a stinker for Aston Villa
According to Sofascore, Lenglet had a zero per cent pass accuracy with his long passes.
More importantly, he made this huge error which led to a goal and he would not even be playing had Diego Carlos been fit.
He also lost 60 per cent of his attempted aerial duels and it was evident Marco Silva wanted his side to exploit that area of the pitch.
Lenglet even failed to make a single interception and Emery will not be pleased with his performance.
Neither did he block a single shot so defensively, it was far from an impressive one for him.
Unai Emery will not be pleased
Fulham had the luxury of 15 attempts against Villa which shows that the defenders did not do enough.
Out of those 15, only four were on target and one was blocked, which was not by Lenglet.
When compared to centre-backs in Europe’s top five leagues, his numbers have been underwhelming, to say the least.
According to fbref, 0.76 interceptions per game put him in the bottom 13 percentile in comparison to others in his position.
His clearances and aerial duels won too are in the bottom 24 percentile and Emery will be demanding more from his defenders.
Hopefully, there will be an improvement in the next game or Emery may actually make the decision to remove him from the playing eleven.
In other Aston Villa news, the club may have suffered yet another injury blow as a first-team player could now be out longer than first feared.
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