Emery must bin Matty Cash experiment after Aston Villa loss v Nottingham Forest
Unai Emery must stop playing Matty Cash on the wing after a poor performance for Aston Villa against Nottingham Forest.
The Villans suffered a late defeat at the City Ground on Saturday (15 December) as Jhon Duran’s header was cancelled out by Nikola Milenkovic and Anthony Elanga.
Despite the best efforts of Emi Martinez, the away side lost 2-1 after failing to create enough clear-cut chances on the day.
As a result, Emery needs to make a change moving forward and end this Cash experiment in B6.
Matty Cash struggles for Aston Villa v Nottingham Forest
The Poland international has featured as a right winger in the past two games and actually performed well against RB Leipzig.
This saw a similar tactical approach utilised against Forest but this didn’t pay off as the 27-year-old struggled against his former side.
Cash remained on the pitch for the full 90 minutes but only clocked up 45 touches and 19 passes with a 70 per cent accuracy [FotMob] which isn’t good enough.
Despite playing as a forward, the right-back registered just one shot and maintained a dribble success of just 33 per cent while also failing to complete an accurate cross.
This could be acceptable if he contributed defensively, as more of a wing-back, but this wasn’t the case either.
This saw the Pole complete just 33 per cent of tackles while being dribbled past on one occasion while putting up just one clearance and two interceptions.
Looking ahead to a clash against Manchester City on Saturday (21 December), Emery has to stop starting Cash on the wing.
It may have worked in Europe but in the Premier League, Forest were able to exploit his weaknesses which ultimately led to the winner.
In other Aston Villa news, Gary Lineker has hit out over the Nottingham Forest controversy that Match of the Day failed to show.
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