Aston Villa's midfield rebuild is gathering pace at an impressive clip, and the latest man through the doors at Bodymoor Heath is Joao Gomes. The Braz...
Aston Villa's midfield rebuild is gathering pace at an impressive clip, and the latest man through the doors at Bodymoor Heath is Joao Gomes. The Brazilian arrives from Wolverhampton Wanderers having spent the last eighteen months in and out of a side that has suffered from a palpable lack of direction. Yet while the malaise at Molineux has dragged down several promising careers, this transfer feels distinctly different. This is not a player being cast aside. This is a player being handed a platform. Gomes is a tackling machine in its purest sense. Watch him for ninety minutes and you will see a man who treats the act of winning the ball back not as a duty but as a compulsion. In a Villa side that has occasionally looked too polite in the engine room, his presence offers something they have lacked since the departure of a certain Douglas Luiz. Where others hesitate, Gomes bites. Where others jockey, he commits. That is a quality that travels, and one that will be embraced by the crowd on the Holte End almost immediately. There is a narrative doing the rounds that he was simply part of a broken system at Wolves. And there is truth in that. The team lacked attacking fluidity, and their transitional play was non existent for long stretches. But Gomes was often the one man doing the dirty work while others lost their nerve. His reading of the game in a low block is sharp, and his ability to spring attacks with a simple, driving pass out of pressure is underrated. The question is whether Unai Emery can refine the rough edges. If he can, Villa have landed a midfielder who will not just sit in front of the back four but will actively stalk the opposition's best player. For the Villa fans, the appeal is straightforward. They love a player who bleeds for the shirt, and they love a signing that makes the team harder to play against. Joao Gomes does both. He will get stuck in, he will be in the mixer, and he will make sure that the midfield battle is won on his terms. In a league where so much is decided by physicality and concentration, that is a welcome addition. You can already sense the applause building for the first crunching tackle he lands in claret and blue. Ultimately, this is a low risk, high reward piece of business. Gomes did not suit the chaos at Wolves, but the structure at Villa Park is different. Under Emery, there is a plan. And in the middle of that plan, there is now a Brazilian dog who loves to bite. Expect him to become popular very quickly.
