Efan Ekoku tore Clement Lenglet to shreds in the Aston Villa vs Fulham match at Craven Cottage on Saturday, February 17, which finished 2-1 for the visitors.
Villa appeared to be on their way to victory with a 2-0 lead, but the Frenchman made a blunder, allowing the hosts to cut the gap in half.
He lost concentration and failed to communicate with Emi Martinez, resulting in both of them attempting to go for the identical cross played in by Antonee Robinson.
Rodrigo Muniz took advantage of this and ended up scoring, much to Unai Emery’s chagrin.
Ekoku, a BBC analyst commentating on the Premier League World Feed, said (17 February, 16:27): “Lenglet’s defending at the near post was terrible. Martinez and Lenglet should do better. That’s an absolute steal.”
Lenglet delivers a stinker for Aston Villa.
According to Sofascore, Lenglet had 0% pass accuracy with his long passes.
More importantly, he committed a terrible error that resulted in a goal, and he would not have played if Diego Carlos had been fit.
He also lost 60% of his attempted aerial duels, indicating that Marco Silva intended his side to exploit that part of the play.
Lenglet failed to make a single interception, and Emery will be disappointed with his effort.
He did not block a single shot, so his defensive performance was not particularly outstanding.
Unai Emery will not be happy.
Fulham had the luxury of 15 attempts against Villa, indicating that the defenders did not perform enough.
Out of the 15, only four were on target, and one was blocked, but not by Lenglet.
When compared to centre-backs in Europe’s top five leagues, his statistics have been disappointing to say the least.
According to fbref, 0.76 interceptions per game has him in the lowest 13 percentile among players in his position.
His clearances and aerial duels won are in the bottom 24 percentile, and Emery will expect more from his defenders.
Hopefully, there will be an improvement in the next game, or Emery may decide to remove him from the starting eleven.
In other Aston Villa news, the club may have suffered yet another injury blow, with a first-team player perhaps out for longer than expected.
