How one player stepped up to help Aston Villa salvage a point from a lacklustre Premier League opener

There wasn’t a lot to celebrate for Aston Villa in their first Premier League match of the season against Newcastle United.

Villa produced an awful performance on opening day, falling into every trap Newcastle United set and matching each pressurised turnover with an unforced error of their own.

They completed a lower percentage of passes than they did in every games in the Premier League and Champions League last season with two exceptions: the win at AFC Bournemouth and the final game of the season at Manchester United, two of their last three.

Unai Emery must have been frustrated by the all-round performance, which was capped off by the sequence of events that led to Villa playing 25 minutes and stoppage time with ten men after the sending off of Ezri Konsa.

There’s no escaping it. This was a bad one. If there was one glimmer of hope it was that Villa escaped with a point, and supporters were unanimous that a single player stood above the rest as the reason that point ended up on the board.

Marco Bizot smashed his Villa debut

Villa played portions of two of the aforementioned three matches with ten men. In May, Emiliano Martínez was sent off – also for denial of an obvious goalscoring opportunity – at Old Trafford. He was suspended for the Newcastle game and Villa had a new signing to replace him.

Marco Bizot wasn’t a banner signing but he earned a ton of credit for his first competitive performance in a Villa shirt. The 34-year-old stood in for Martínez and kept a clean sheet to which he was the primary contributor.

Like Newcastle’s Nick Pope, Bizot made three saves in all but his three came from shots that totalled a post-shot expected goals value three times higher. He denied Anthony Elanga one-on-one (0.48 xG) as early in the third minute and saved well again barely ten minutes later.

Saves are just part of the picture for goalkeepers in the modern era and there’s no denying that Villa lost a little bit of quality with the ball at Bizot’s feet, though I thought he was broadly fine in that aspect and a lower pass completion rate than Pope was largely a function of the team performance.

Martínez’s deputy made good

A snapshot analysis of Bizot’s performance data from last season reveals Villa’s rationale for buying him. In almost every technical sense, Bizot operates a bit like Martínez but not quite at his level. In other words, he was signed to be an understudy rather than a starter but to be a stylistic fit when needed.

I thought that played out exactly in Saturday’s match and nowhere more so than in his handling of the ball.

The area where Martínez can most accurately be described as world class is in collecting crosses and commanding his penalty area. Against Newcastle, Bizot’s handling was spotless. He saved cleanly. He caught crosses without fuss. He punched positively even while being fouled.

Bizot came up with a big performance right when it was needed. It was a bad day at the office for most of Villa’s players but we know from last season’s bitter experience just how much a point can mean.

The post How one player stepped up to help Aston Villa salvage a point from a lacklustre Premier League opener appeared first on AVillaFan.com – Aston Villa Fan Site.