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Shortly after Aston Villa received promotion to the Premier League in 2019, Dean Smith was confronted with a call.
Would he pursue a deal for Manchester United defender Axel Tuanzebe following a really profitable mortgage transfer, or may a less expensive resolution be discovered elsewhere? In spite of everything, Villa had been already going to fork out £20million-plus on Tyrone Mings.
Villa opted for the latter and Smith requested for £12million to be funnelled throughout to his outdated membership Brentford in alternate for Ezri Konsa – a centre-back who was a work-in-progress, with a excessive ceiling.
Smith additionally signed the extra skilled Bjorn Engels to play alongside Mings, that means it wasn’t till November that Konsa made his first Premier League begin. He made 14 league begins earlier than lockdown and appeared like a £12million defender – however one thing modified throughout these months the place footballers had been sat at house like the remainder of us.
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The 23-year-old sensed a possibility to turn into a mainstay in Smith’s beginning XI and eagerly requested John Terry for one-to-one zoom classes to work on his defending in the beginning, but in addition the mindset required to fulfil his potential.
His performances after soccer resumed in June had been considerably improved and Villa’s souped-up defence was key to the membership beating relegation.
Konsa had earned his spot, however no person anticipated the outstanding enchancment we’ve witnessed through our TV screens this season.
The cool, composed centre-back has marshalled a defence which has saved 14 clear sheets in 28 matches – statistically solely Manchester Metropolis and Chelsea boast extra spectacular data.
A statistic, through Who Scored, emerged in January revealing that Konsa was the one defender in Europe who hadn’t been dribbled previous this season. A number of have escaped him since, however Konsa has appeared Virgil van Dijk-esque in the best way he waits for strikers to make a mistake as an alternative of lunging in and making one himself.
Others are sitting up and taking discover and reported transfer interest from Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur received’t shock Konsa’s supporters within the slightest.
The actual fact he’s received 74.5 per cent of his defensive duels this season – as per Wyscout – is arguably much more spectacular. It’s the very best proportion of any English centre-back within the Premier League this season, although it wasn’t sufficient for Gareth Southgate at hand him his maiden worldwide call-up.
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Mings, John Stones, Harry Maguire, Eric Dier and Conor Coady – the 5 centre-backs Southgate has chosen for England’s newest fixtures – don’t match up in that regard.
They produce other strengths. Stones, for instance, is excellent on the ball, whereas Mings and Maguire have been extra dominant aerially.
Nevertheless, if Southgate is basing his choices on kind, Konsa can depend himself very unfortunate. Ex-England captain Rio Ferdinand admits to being ‘baffled’ by Southgate’s decision to miss Konsa and Everton’s Michael Keane.
Primarily based on all of the statistics within the desk above, solely Maguire fares higher total than Konsa.
Smith has challenged the person he calls Villa’s ‘Mr Constant’ to realize starvation from his newest England snub, simply as Jack Grealish did earlier than successful the nation over within the final spherical of worldwide matches.
However Konsa’s possibilities of sneaking into Southgate’s 23-man squad for the Euros now look bleak with these in and across the camp predicting solely minor alterations between now and England’s opener with Croatia on June 13.
One thing is clearly nonetheless lacking for Southgate, however there isn’t an terrible lot extra Konsa can do.
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