Tielemans is not satisfied with his workload

Youri Tielemans joined Aston Villa as a free agent after the end of his contract at relegated Leicester. He was expected to be included in the starting eleven, but Unai Emery hasn’t given him much of a sniff yet, let alone put him in the starting line-up.

He was 20 years old when he left his parent club Anderlecht. It was known what a talent he had and the player himself chose AS Monaco where he could continue to develop. After a season and a half of great performances, he went on loan to Leicester for six months. After the end of the guest stint, the club decided to buy him, the Belgian came out at 45 million euros.

He played 195 games for the Foxes in four years in which he recorded 28 goals and 26 assists. He scores the occasional goal and adds an assist, but his role is completely different. He often went for balls between the stoppers, developed attacking chances, but on the other hand he could also work defensively.

If Leicester were to salvage the Premier League last season, he would surely get most of the credit. Unfortunately, all the efforts were not enough and due to relegation to the Championship, Tielemans decided not to renew his contract.

Already during the last years the biggest Premier League teams were circling around him, the situation around him was regularly monitored by Manchester United and Arsenal. However, Aston Villa, who are thriving under Unai Emery, have come in with an offer and will be playing in the Conference League this season. It was in the preliminary round against Hibernian that the Belgian played his only full game so far. He has played 20 minutes more in 4 Premier League games than he has in this one.

Last season Aston Villa’s midfield was dominated by the trio of Boubacar Camara with Douglas Luiz at pivot and John McGinn playing in front of them. Surprisingly, the adopted trio is not something coach Emery is going to touch and the word rotation doesn’t mean much to him either. Of course when the team played one game a week there was God knows what reason for it, after all 6 points after four duels is not bad especially when the losses came against Newcastle and Liverpool.

However, the Belgian came into the club thinking he would feature, which he did, but certainly not in the quantity he would have hoped for himself, so he spoke about his situation, “The situation is not nice, I told the coach I came to Aston Villa to play. He understands me, but at the moment he prefers to play with the midfielders from last season, he also told me that soon the games will come in quick succession and that my time will come.”

After the national break, the Birmingham club will play a Conference League group match against Poland’s Legia Warsaw, Alkmaar of the Netherlands and Zrijnski of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In addition, the Carabao Cup will be played in England, in which Aston Villa will face Everton, so they are thinking about promotion. So the team will have two games in one week.

However, despite the increase in the number of matches, Tielemas is far from certain, as he is not alone in waiting for his chance. Jacob Ramsey, summer signing Nicolo Zaniolo and Tielemans’ compatriot Leander Dendocker are ready on the bench.

It’s clear that some rotation has to come otherwise there is a risk of overload and injury to the most important midfielders for Emery’s team. Whether the Belgian, who should slowly be in his prime, will get a proper chance to see what he can do we will find out right after the repre break.

Source: Fabrizio Romano, Aston Villa