Why Moussa Diaby Is Perfect For Aston Villa
Unai Emery's latest acquisition of the summer has seen Moussa Diaby move to Aston Villa from Bayer Leverkusen. While the fee brings a level of expectation, Diaby's distinctive blend of abilities makes him absolutely perfect for Villa's tactical approach... almost.
Transcript
00:00 Hey there everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here and Aston Villa, you may have heard,
00:08 have just bought Moussa Diaby.
00:10 And not to sort of give away too much about how I feel about this signing, but if I am
00:14 an Aston Villa fan and my club has just signed Moussa Diaby, I'm doing this.
00:19 And that is because not only is he such a good fit for what Unai Emre is trying to do
00:25 with this Villa side, but just in general, he is so f***ing good.
00:32 I'm actually quite looking forward to this video because it's a nice combination of,
00:35 "Ooh, look how good your team is and how they play," and then, "Ooh, look how good this
00:38 player is and how he fits in this team."
00:40 But there is, I should warn you, there is a dessert course after that, which isn't particularly
00:45 nice, but it's only a little bit.
00:47 Like it's one tiny, tiny little cup of just like, "Ooh, really?"
00:51 Right, so your primer.
00:52 Unai Emre has very, very, very strict footballing philosophies.
00:56 They have served him so well throughout his time.
00:58 He's got like, let me just check in my head, 86 Euro per leagues to his name because of
01:03 them, and he's been really good at implementing them at Villa.
01:05 And that philosophy is how you manage space.
01:08 Now, all football is at times is basically how you manage space, where you choose to
01:11 find it, where you choose to close it down.
01:13 But Emre is very, very, very, very good with it.
01:16 In fact, I'm going to need the lesser spotted other team for this.
01:18 All right, there you are, two banks of four, which regardless of formations and whatnot,
01:23 you still do see quite a lot.
01:24 Now, the way you make chances is you make space.
01:26 And some teams like Man City like to make space within the players to sort of play through
01:30 them.
01:31 Like you see teams do this all the time, that they'll keep their wide players really, really
01:34 wide, which sort of forces the defense to stretch a bit.
01:37 And that makes loads more room in the middle for you to play through and to do big stuff,
01:41 make stuff happen.
01:42 But Emre ain't this guy.
01:44 This is the last thing he tries to do.
01:45 He does not want to create space within the other team.
01:48 He wants to create space around it.
01:50 And the way he does that is by being very deep, by being very narrow, and most importantly,
01:55 being very patient before you sort of go.
01:58 What he's trying to do is to invite the opposition on to push them as far at the pitch as they
02:02 can to leave loads of space, not only in behind, but on the flanks.
02:07 If you can compress a team in this way, then when you win the ball back, or if you've already
02:11 got the ball because it's your build up, you can then go in behind, you can then go around
02:15 the sides, you can hit really fast lightning attacks.
02:17 And if you're a Villa fan, you saw a load of them last year.
02:21 Time and time again, last season Villa would win the ball back in this sort of central
02:24 area and whether it was Watkins, Buendia, Ramsey, who am I forgetting, Leon Bailey,
02:29 someone would already be making the run into the yawning chasm left behind the team and
02:34 they'd be in on goal.
02:35 You're a Villa fan, you saw that and you did not get bored of it.
02:38 But also sometimes you can't do this.
02:39 Sometimes it's impossible to bait the team to come on to you that strong because, well,
02:43 that's Villa's tactic and teams will train themselves not to do it.
02:47 So the other very clever way Emery has of doing this is by artificially manufacturing
02:51 this space.
02:52 And the way he does that is this quartet of attacking players he's got, they're all very
02:55 flexible, they're all very good at dropping out of their position to see if they can pull
02:58 the defender with them.
02:59 Again, Villa fans, how many times last season did you see Olly Watkins vacate the central
03:03 area, take a defender with him and allow someone like Ramsey to steam through instead?
03:08 So my point, if I haven't hammered it home enough already, is that Emery likes to get
03:12 in behind.
03:13 He likes to compact, compress the opposition defence to create room either at the sides
03:18 or in behind to then just kill them with it.
03:21 So why, if you're a Villa fan, should you have your pants around your ankles rubbing
03:25 your thighs at the prospect of Moussa Diaby signing for your club?
03:30 Well, because I would argue right now in all of European football, there is no attacking
03:35 player who loves more than to make that exact run in behind.
03:40 Not really something you can demonstrate with statistics, like here's his FB ref profile,
03:44 you should just be excited about that anyway, look at his output, look at his numbers, look
03:48 at just how dangerous it is.
03:49 That's across the entire of Europe's top five leagues, by the way, that's not just Bundesliga,
03:54 but a little thing called the eye test.
03:57 Whether it's because Leverkusen have invited the press on and have found them the room
04:00 to just run into the space behind, or whether he links it with a teammate who's dropped
04:04 out of the space so he can get into it, the two big Villa moves.
04:08 He does this time and time and time again, and he's so quick and he's so skilled with
04:13 the ball when running at pace that he's just, he was born to do this.
04:17 And I know there's been some question marks about signing Pau Torres, because while he's
04:20 excellent, do you really want to replace Mings that causes a major disruption?
04:24 You could not be buying a better centre back in world football, in Villa's price range,
04:29 to play in this way.
04:31 Like his balls over the top are incredible, his through balls are amazing.
04:34 You get a Pau Torres to take advantage of having a Diaby.
04:37 And I know sometimes you can just wind up with these players who are pure speed merchants
04:41 and that's all they've really got.
04:42 I need to stress this, Diaby's technical ability at pace and at not pace in terms of his finishing,
04:48 his passing, all of that, is top, top, top, top level.
04:51 He gets so many goals and assists because he's properly equipped to take advantage of
04:56 his speed.
04:57 He can play very comfortably on both sides, by the way, which should be another thing
05:00 that excites a Villa fan.
05:01 But when you play him on the right, which I think is where he did most of his work for
05:04 Leverkusen last season, because he's left footed, he quite likes to sort of just float
05:08 into the middle, to float into central areas.
05:11 And again, if you're an Aston Villa team that's very well drilled on moving into space after
05:15 one of your teammates have left it, that is sort of a natural thing he does, which will
05:18 work really well for them.
05:19 So yeah, just to say it for like the fifth time already, this video, Unai Emery could
05:22 not have gone out and shopped for a more appropriate player for his sort of compress, compress,
05:27 compress, bang, strike.
05:29 There will be Premier League defenders who will play Villa this year and after the game,
05:33 they will have had such a bad time.
05:35 They will earnestly wonder if they can just call the police.
05:39 Now as promised at the start of this meal, delicious starter about Unai Emery's play
05:43 style and delicious main course about how Bussi Diaby fits that.
05:46 But it's time for the slightly bitter, possibly spoiled little dessert.
05:51 What is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very,
05:55 very key to making this system work for Emery is the ability to turn the ball over when
06:00 your opponent is nice and compressed in the middle of the pitch.
06:03 Like this is the shape they're always trying to get the opposition into.
06:05 Again, if you're a Villa fan, you'll have seen this so much last season, but it's dependent
06:09 upon the ability for every player to compete to win the ball.
06:14 You need to be able to correctly press at the right times and effectively turn it over.
06:18 So you have to physically be good in the challenge as well as just well disciplined to make this
06:23 work.
06:24 Otherwise, you can't get the ball back to set people free.
06:26 And as a result, these are Jacob Ramsey's defensive stats for playing as an attacking
06:31 midfielder and these are Emi Buendia's defensive stats for playing as an attacking midfielder.
06:36 This is what Emery wants and needs out of his forward line.
06:40 And this is the same stats for Diaby.
06:44 If you're sitting there watching this and you made any noise other than, "Ooooh," you
06:49 have not understood.
06:50 Now, full disclosure, Leon Bailey's numbers are about that bad for defensive contribution
06:55 as well.
06:56 But that might be precisely why you go out and get Diaby.
06:58 Because if you're going to have somebody who's not going to contribute that way and you've
07:01 effectively got to do the work for, you need to contribute loads and loads of goals and
07:06 assists.
07:07 You need to be the player who's constantly getting released to make things happen.
07:09 And Bailey, I think I'm right in saying his last goal for Villa was like at the start
07:15 of the year, Leeds in January, unless I've forgotten one.
07:18 So you can have one of those players in there, but they need to do a lot more.
07:23 But what is a thing?
07:25 Gavin, right, Unai Emery, he's worked with Diaby before and I'm sure he's been well scouted.
07:30 So this won't be coming as a shock to him.
07:33 He's very well aware of what he can contribute going forward, but also very well aware of
07:36 where his game is lacking defensively.
07:38 So if they'd gone and got him anyway, they've spent that much money on him, it could only
07:42 be because Emery thinks either it's not a problem or he can fix it.
07:46 And as a closing thought, right, which I'm going to make as a Newcastle United fan, Villa,
07:51 Newcastle and Brighton all really gave the big teams a bit of a scare last season.
07:55 A bit of a bloody nose.
07:56 They took a Champions League place off of them, took a Conference League place off of
07:59 them, took a Europa League place off them.
08:00 That's not supposed to happen.
08:02 And it is absolutely part of the reason why you've seen all the quote unquote big clubs
08:06 spending enormous sums of money this year to make sure this doesn't happen again.
08:11 But Villa, just like Newcastle and Brighton, will want it to happen again.
08:14 And next season, when other teams are a bit more defensive against them, when teams are
08:18 a bit more afraid of them, they're going to need better players, elite level players who
08:22 can break that stuff down.
08:23 And the only way those three clubs can buy those players, if they shop in a slightly
08:29 different aisle, not the 80 to 100 million pound guaranteed success best player in the
08:33 world aisle, but that has some of the traits of the best players in the world aisle, but
08:38 also has some major drawbacks that stop transfers to these big clubs.
08:42 And that's Diaby.
08:43 He has the attacking output and the ability of someone who could play for any team in
08:47 the world, but his defensive work is lacking that no big manager would probably want to
08:51 take a risk on him.
08:52 Look at how Newcastle managed to get Sven Bottmann last year.
08:54 He looks like one of the best centre backs in the world, but none of the big clubs would
08:58 touch him because there was concerns over his pace.
09:01 What Villa have to do, and it's how they've got Pau Torres, it's how they've got Baileys,
09:03 kind of how they've got Tielemans, is go, right, okay, we're going to buy you for your
09:07 upside and we're going to work really hard to make sure the downside isn't a problem.
09:11 We are going to gamble.
09:12 And that's ultimately what Diaby is.
09:14 He's an exciting, thrilling gamble.
09:16 Because if that works, if that clicks, if that comes off, you've got loads of goals
09:20 and you've got loads of assists and you've got loads of great moments he's going to have
09:24 for Villa next season.
09:25 But if it doesn't, he probably might start to break down what's really good about the
09:29 system and that's a challenge for Emery.
09:31 But I mean, that's just like your opinion, man.
09:35 And yeah, it is.
09:36 So let me hear yours in the comments below, please.
09:38 And if you've enjoyed this video, or even if you haven't and you just want to do something
09:41 nice for somebody, why not subscribe to 442 here on YouTube?
09:44 We do this all the time.
09:46 In the meantime, though, thank you very much for watching.
09:48 Follow me on Twitter @AdamCleary, C-L-E-R-Y.
09:50 The brand new 442, the season preview issue.
09:53 I will be talking about this all week.
09:54 It is my favourite thing we do all year.
09:57 In stores now.
09:58 Go and treat yourself.
09:59 But until next time, this has been 442.
10:02 Ooh, Diaby.
10:03 Ooh, very exciting.
10:05 I'll see you soon.
10:06 Bye.
10:07 Bye.
10:08 Bye.
10:09 Bye.
10:10 Bye.
10:10 Bye.
10:10 Bye.
10:11 Bye.
10:12 Bye.
10:13 Bye.
10:13 Bye.
10:14 Bye.
10:15 Bye.
10:15 [BLANK_AUDIO]