Warriors and Aston Villa midfielder Marvelous Nakamba played 81 minutes of his club’s 0-0 draw against West Ham in a match played at Villa Park on Monday night.
The match was Nakamba’s first outing in the English Premier League. He was replaced by Douglas Luiz when West Ham was already down to 10 men following DRC left-back, Arthur Masuaku’s dismissal for two bookable offences.
Speaking to BBC Sport after the match, Aston Villa manager Dean Smith bemoaned his club’s failure to use the extra man. He said:
I thought 11 v 11 we were really good and created the best chances. You have to take them.
I expected a little better of us when they went down to 10. We never used that extra man and got rushed on the ball rather than keeping our structure.
Overall I thought we performed really well – our defensive organisation was good and we restricted them to few chances.
We’re evolving as a team, some of them have only played a couple of Premier League games. They’re getting better and better.
We became risk-averse near the end of the game. The running stats were through the roof, I can’t question their work-rate.
[It was just a case of] using the brain a bit in the last 20 minutes – we should have made them work and drag them out of position. Instead, we were trying to take men on.
According to Soca263, Nakamba’s stats on debut against West Ham are as follows:
- Minutes Played -81′
- Pass Accuracy- 81%
- Clearances- 1
- Interceptions- 1
- Duels Won- 8/11
- Rate-6.9
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