Calum Chambers could demand crunch Aston Villa transfer exit talks after another Unai Emery snub v Wolves
Aston Villa defender Calum Chambers has become an unfortunate afterthought throughout his time at Villa Park and he could well demand crunch exit talks with Unai Emery after yet another snub against Wolves.
Aston Villa and Wolves settled for a share of the spoils on Sunday (8 October) after a 1-1 draw at the Molineux Stadium in their latest chapter of the West Midlands derby.
However, their celebrations were short-lived, however, as Aston Villa hit back inside two minutes with defender Pau Torres grabbing his first goal for the club.
Villa have won just once at Molineux since 2012, and their victory was when the game was played behind closed doors during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
Unai Emery set his side out in a 3-4-2-1, as he has done in three of their five games on the road in the Premier League this season, deploying Cash and Digne as wing-backs and giving them licence to get into the final third.
But it was another game in which the now nearly forgotten Chambers was forced to watch on from the bench and left to ponder what his future looks like over the next few months.
The former Arsenal and Fulham defender has made just two starts this season [Transfermarkt], both coming in Europe and one of those appearances was another in which he struggled, in the 3-2 defeat to Legia Warsaw.
Guity of some comical and poor defending in the first half when Legia Warsaw perilously targetted his right-hand flank to completely expose his defensive frailties. Was half-asleep on both of Legia’s goals when he allowed the cross for the first before failing to track the runner for the second.
In his 17 games at Villa Park last season, Chambers only made just two starts and was a regular benchwarmer after Emery was appointed back in November.
In those games, Chambers didn’t contribute to any clean sheets which is made all the more telling given Konsa and Mings, when paired together, during Emery’s tenure helped themselves to nine clean sheets [WhoScored]. The worrying numbers don’t stop there too.
The 28-year-old only averaged 0.5 tackles per game, 0.6 tackles, won just 47% of his ground duels and a disastrous 33% of his aerial duels, as per SofaScore which makes him an unreliable commodity in the Aston Villa defence.
Even with Tyrone Mings out injured for the long haul, Emery will always turn to Diego Carlos, Ezri Konsa and Pau Torres over Chambers and the reason he features at right-back is simply because Emery has no specialist replacement for Matty Cash.
It’s clear Chambers’ place in the Villa eleven is bordering on non-existent and with the defender now in his prime years at 28, he needs to be playing football. And that demand could well be made to Emery ahead of the January transfer window in which a Villa Park exit is very much on the cards.