According to the Telegraph, last season Alan Hutton was the worst full back in the Premier League. Some might say this is cruel.
However, what the stats didn’t show was the Scotsman’s sheer commitment to the cause.
Yet Hutton isn’t the man to take us forward. If we go straight back up it’s unlikely he’ll be our first choice right-back for the 2017-18 season. Nonetheless, some of the criticism and scapegoating he received last season was unfair. The full-back won 78% of his tackles and showed fitness and desire, constantly getting up and down that right flank.
Hutton obviously cared quite a bit about Villa’s relegation, even though he didn’t have the skillset to stop it happening. Too many times his crossing was wayward. Villa didn’t win a league game last season when Alan Hutton was in the team.
Last season the Scottish international only managed one assist. This is particularly concerning when the role of a modern full-back is to build as well as destroy. During his time at Barcelona under Pep Guardiola, right-back Dani Alves was the creator of 45 goals.
Admittedly, a comparison between Pep’s Barcelona and the current Villa side is a tad imbalanced. Closer to home, Bournemouth full backs Charlie Daniels and Simon Francis assisted nine goals last season. Daniels, a left-winger cum left-back, also managed to grab three goals.
Last season, the Villans were the Premier League’s lowest scorers by a country mile, and were tipped to be according to the latest Premier League lines. Tallying just 27 in the 38 games, no midfielder got over two goals. So perhaps it’s unfair to blame the right-back at the fact we can’t finish our dinner.
Yet we can look at this from another angle. Alan Hutton, Leandro Bacuna and Micah Richards were the players who filled that right-back slot last season. The three got a total of two league assists and one league goal.
Compare that to the collective errors they made which led to goals; seven makes it clear that they’re more likely to gift the opposition a goal than create one. Who could forget Bacuna’s suicidal back pass against Southampton, or the calamities in the 3-1 away loss to Sunderland?
Leandro Bacuna, a man not too popular with us Villa fans, is an option at right-back.
However, the fact that he loses more tackles than he wins, and that he commits four times as many fouls as he suffers, shows that our number seven is hardly Championship calibre, let alone Champions League.
The Curacao man does have the killer ball in him and good pace, though ultimately Bacuna isn’t even a full back. Our number seven was initially signed as a winger, it was Lambert who forced him at right-back. It remains to be seen whether Bacuna will be up for the challenge of the Championship, both mentally and physically.
Micah Richards is another who could be starting at Sheffield Wednesday at right-back. Some think he’s the most likely to do so.
If the former England international improves his positioning, he could be decent at Championship level with a combination of strength and a turn of pace. The question is whether his head is in it. Richards’ confidence will be low as it looks like his captaincy will be lost to new boy Tommy Elphick, and by the fact that a desired transfer to Sunderland fell through.
Richards must also take a lot of the blame for Villa’s relegation, starting 23 games of the train wreck that was the 2015-16 season.
Maybe Di Matteo will sign a right-back before Villa travel to Hillsborough on August the seventh. However, the Italian has stated a need to clear players out before bringing some more in. Forward thinking Chris Gunter, or out of favour Premier League champion Ritchie de Laet are names that spring to mind. Whatever happens, a new right-back should be near the top of Di Matteo’s shopping list.
