Aston Villa taking ‘still young’ Morgan Rogers out of the firing line would be a kindness, not a condemnation
Aston Villa supporters are on edge and attacking midfielder Morgan Rogers bore the brunt of it after a poor start to the season.
Rogers kept his place in the Villa side for Thursday’s Europa League match against Bologna despite calls for him to be dropped. Ollie Watkins lost his spot in the starting line-up but Rogers remained.
The 23-year-old then played the full 90 minutes and came up short again. When he completed a pass late in the game, an ironic cheer was audible from the stands at Villa Park, an ugly moment he and we could do without.
According to Fotmob data, Rogers completed 10 out of 24 attempted passes and was dispossessed six times. The miscue that teed up the only goal of the game for John McGinn was Rogers’ first and last shot attempt.
There’s no dressing up what was another bad individual performance or that it stood out more with most other players demonstrating some improvement on what came before.
It would be nice to think Villa supporters could hold back their ire for the good of the team in these situations but they’re forking out a small fortune to see Europa League football and watching a player who is supposedly rated at a nine-figure sum and misplaced more than half of his passes.
The issue with the ironic cheer at the end of the Bologna game isn’t so much that the fans let their irritation show in a less than helpful way, but that Rogers was on the pitch to make the pass in the first place.
He shouldn’t have started the match after the performances that came before it. He should have been substituted. Villa manager Unai Emery made two decisions that left Rogers exposed to supporters who are still on edge and the player paid the emotional price.
‘An overdue mercy’
Speaking to Jules Breach, Owen Hargreaves and Martin Keown on TNT Sports after the match, Rogers’ Villa and England teammate Ezri Konsa backed him to find his form again.
“Morgan’s still young,” said Konsa. “I think a lot of people forget. He had a great season for us last year but coming into this season he hasn’t quite started the way he wanted to.
“But for me especially, he’s a good friend of mine, I try and encourage him as much as possible even though he lost the ball a lot of times. It’s important for a player like him, you have to keep getting it and the good thing about him, he keeps trying.”
The fact is, Rogers did lose the ball a lot, not just overall but in big moments when a better or earlier pass might have cracked the game open. We should remember that Rogers’ role is to play high-difficulty passes in high-yield moments and that can come with a low pass completion rate, but Konsa’s words should be heeded behind the scenes too.
Rogers is still young. Taking him out of the firing line wouldn’t be a slight on his abilities but an overdue mercy. He’s clearly struggling for confidence and throwing minutes at it isn’t helping.
Becoming the player Villa supporters dig out for every error isn’t going to help either and Emery – irrespective of his opinion of Harvey Elliott and Jadon Sancho – should now make the difficult decision to give Rogers some time out of the spotlight.
Rogers isn’t a one-season wonder or an over-promoted Championship player; some Villa supporters have a tendency to reach for the harshest conclusion when the pressure’s on.
The real Rogers is clearly in there when the spaces open up in transition, even against Bologna. Championship players don’t drive like Rogers does. They don’t turn away from opponents and make powerful runs that put the other team on the back foot like Rogers does.
He’ll get that final ball back too and Villa will be better for it but we’ve surely reached the point at which exposure has been shown not to be the way to get there.
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