Leon Bailey remains an enigma and a player with whom Aston Villa fans are rightly growing out of patience.
It’s just not clicking for the Jamaican winger.
It appears he seems a player better suited to the (dare I write it) “moments of magic” system of Steven Gerrard’s reign than he does Unai Emery’s built around high possession, tempo, and defensive shape.
Quite simply, at present his glimpses of brilliance are far outweighed by losing possession, careless tackles or a general lack of urgency in defensive transition.
When he arrived at the club from Bayer Leverkusen, he did so with big raps and, understandably so, after netting 15 times in 40 appearances, including six assists, during the German club’s 2020/21 campaign.
It is only natural being part of the trio who joined the club in the wake of Jack Grealish’s departure that expectations would be high and, especially so, given his transfer fee of around £30 million.
While his debut season at Villa was significantly hampered by injury, supporters kept the faith almost wholly due to his wonder strike in the team’s 3-0 victory over Everton in September 2021. However, that now feels like ancient history after a spate of underwhelming performances.
Although finding the back of the net in the Premier League – in impressive fashion – on four occasions this season (against Manchester City, Brentford, Manchester United and Leeds), these flashes are clearly the exception and not the rule.
Some of this inconsistency appears to stem from fluctuating physical effort and intent, while opposition coaches and defenders also look to be clamping down on him with greater physicality (much to his chagrin) and are preying on his continued desire to cut inside to his preferred left foot. These combined factors have greatly quelled his output.
On top of that, there most probably is legitimacy in questioning his resilience.
Although a simplistic measure of this, the fact that 18 of the 21 goals he has scored with both Villa and Leverkusen since the start of the 2020 season have come in wins for his team overwhelmingly suggests his influence aligns with the fortunes of his side on any given day.
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Emery himself admits to being somewhat perplexed about how to best utilise Bailey.
Given a spot in the starting eleven against Everton, presumably to provide some X-factor and explosiveness against the likes of James Tarkowski, Conor Coady and Seamus Coleman, especially on the break, he again failed to fire.
Sure, there were some decent one-touch passes and one particular example of sublime control, but on the whole he cut a frustrated and dejected figure who looked on a different wavelength from his teammates in both attacking and defensive phases.
Perhaps his languid and unpredictable style simply isn’t a natural fit for the rigid, structured approach of Emery. It simply won’t suit all players and we’ll learn more about that in due course when the manager gets his first chance to truly overhaul his squad in the summer. We’d be naïve to think both Bailey and the club would not explore options at that time in search of an outcome that may better suit both parties.
For now, Bailey simply should not be an option in Emery’s starting line-up.
That said, as we have seen, he does have the ability to be a dangerous, impact player off the bench. This tendency bucks the trend of the assertion about his resilience. It is almost as if he feels he does not shoulder the burden of the team’s success or failure when entering a game at a later stage and, as a result, plays more freely.
And this is exactly how he should be deployed until season’s end to maximise his prospects for success.
It begs the question as we continue to strengthen our squad: is there anything wrong with someone like Bailey merely being a depth player capable of delivering off the bench, or is the mixed bag simply going to continue to be too frustrating to endure?
For what it is worth, and though not privy to inner sanctum discussions, I cannot see the Bailey camp ever being content with him in any way being a “super sub” option. If this is true, a summer move seems inevitable.
In the meantime, we will continue to ride the bumps and support him in the hope he can extract himself out of this form slump. Who knows what he’ll deliver? Let’s hope it’s egg on my face in coming weeks.
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