1958Villan, in our Villa 5-5 Forest forum thread, says it is time to support Chester and explains why.
I saw that James Chester has been slammed on Twitter, with one guy saying he’d been superb for two years and rubbish all this season.
Maybe I can offer an explanation for that.
Chester is a right-sided centre-back forced to play on the left side, with a young player, Axel Tuanzebe as his partner.
This young player looks good with the ball at his feet but, his positional sense is more than a little short, meaning Chesters own game is off because he is playing on his wrong side.
Chester first had to play with Jedinak, who went missing a lot of the time, leaving Chester to try and cover for him, to the detriment of Chesters own game.
Not only that but also it needs saying that Chester has been carrying an injury for a few games that got exacerbated in the Wales international.
I’d suggest Chester be given a break from the criticism.
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Agree?
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Melon Donkey added:
Chester is suffering. Maybe still injured but I think a lot of the problems are being caused by the lack of availability of the player in the holding role showing for the ball and demanding it from the defenders.
Chester isn’t the one that should be playing it out and setting us off. And it’s here that I think we need the Ryan Woods type midfielder. And it’s here that I say that Hourihane doesn’t do that and doesn’t do enough in that role. He doesn’t show, he doesn’t demand it, when he gets it he passes safely and it’s sideways and doesn’t set us going. He doesn’t tackle well. I get his set pieces threat but I just am completely perplexed as to what he is doing in his all-round play. He seems to drift for several games then will come up with something that keeps him in the side. Then the pattern is repeated.
It’s a conundrum. We have just scored 12 goals in three games and he has contributed to one of those (the free kick v Derby) if my memory is correct. Is this enough if he isn’t doing the all-round midfield stuff well enough. ?.
Halftime today I would have taken him off and put Whelan on. We needed the ferry sized hole that was in the midfield for their first 3 goals plugged.
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