Aston Villa manager Unai Emery says one of the “powers” of his tactical structure is the versatility he can utilise in defence, and he hasn’t ruled out starting four centre-backs once Tyrone Mings is available for selection. Ezri Konsa is a crucial element given he can play at centre-back and right-back, but Emery has insisted the England international still has improvement to make in the full-back role. Matty Cash and Kosta Nedeljkovic are the natural right-backs in Villa’s squad, although Lamare Bogarde has started in that position in the last three games while Cash has been injured. Diego Carlos came close to leaving Villa in the summer and Villa were ready to replace him in the transfer market if he had departed, but a move never materialised.
Unai Emery said “He is a very good player. His capacity physically, technically and tactically is a lot. Mentally, we are pushing this year trying to get more from him. This year he has started very well. He is smiling, he is positive and has started playing as a centre-back very good. I spoke with him about starting to play with Diego Carlos a little bit on the right side, trying to build up from there. His response was fantastic. He played the second half against Young Boys very focused to play in this position. Last year he was playing there but not 100 per cent focused like I wanted. Sometimes he did, in some very important matches, against Arsenal and Manchester City. But he was not finishing the season really convinced to play there and be successful in this position. But he has the capacity to do it and on Tuesday he did. We were speaking about how we managed pre-season and the transfer window with the possibility to change something. One possibility was Diego Carlos leaving because he had an offer. But he decided to stay and we wanted to keep him here and work, creating and building the structure in different, tactical ways. One of those is to play with Carlos and Konsa and Pau, those three centre-backs building up.” With Lamare Bogarde we have a young player helping us in our structure. I think we can feel stronger with those centre-backs playing together, Diego, Konsa, even Tyrone Mings and Pau Torres. Last year we used this structure and were successful winning a lot of matches but you have to keep working, building it. The mentality to get stronger and focus like we want, explaining to the players what we want. I spoke a lot with him about it. He played before as a right full-back. But he is not properly a right full-back to play high. He is playing, managing the structure and the build-up, with the capacity he has to help us keep possession. Defensively his job is to help us physically, getting wide and doing a lot of man-to-man. We are building the team with our structure because Matty Cash is injured. Kosta is here, 18 years old, trying to adapt to us tactically and do one process, understanding, getting confidence to play minutes like we want. He has to work to get it. But he is ready to play and maybe tomorrow he will. But he needs time to understand tactically what we want. Lamare Bogarde is versatile. He can play centre-back, right full-back doing the same work as Konsa. He can play too as a midfielder. This versatility is very important in our squad, the versatility Konsa has is very important. Last year he was preferring to play as a centre-back, a right centre-back getting wider and being successful. My challenge is to get the best performances with the structure we have and the players we have. One of our powers in the structure is to play with the centre-back, even three or four of them, in case we need it.”
