Where does Youri Tielemans FIT IN at Aston Villa? The Villa Filler Podcast

I think he is not that versatile in terms of playing him as a LM or RM as he doesn’t really drive with the ball and lacks physicality. For me he is direct competition with Luiz, as he would normally play as the more box to box 8 in a midfield pivot as he did at Leicester city. Kamara is our version of Ndidi. He is certainly better than Luiz at progressive passes, that being said Luiz is in a rich vein of form, so I see them both pushing each other and with the volume of games it will allow us to rotate. I do like this signing!

Between the two pivots we'll have Tielemans, Douglas Luis and Kamara. West Ham played 14 games in Europa Conference League. The winner and runner up in the FA cup play 6 games. So the potential exists to play 58 games in 23/24. That means we need to have coverage between the two pivots to play up to 116 games started. If that were to happen, splitting the starts for the two spots between three players evenly results in everyone is still starting 38 games next season. Whomever is not starting in the game still has a very good chance to come in as a sub at some point for any given game. I think the depth is needed and just rotate between the three of them in the two spots. I don't know that we need to experiment with making anyone more of an attacking midfielder.

EDIT: The three possible combinations would be:

Kamara/Luis where Kamara is the more defensively focused player and Luis is box to box
Kamara/Tielemans where Kamara is the more defensively focused player and Tielemans is the box to box
Luis/Tielemans where Luis is the more defensively focused player and Tielemans is the box to box

McGinn probably then pushes up and rotates between the more attacking midfield positions with Ramsey, Bailey, Buendia, and anyone else we bring in.

Id sell Luiz, and put Teliemans straight in! Hes an upgrade, and Ive never been convinced by Luiz! I remember Villa Legendary European Cup winning Captain Dennis Mortimer, and he dominated the midfield! Luiz is far from the top 10 best midfielders Villa have had, seems to insecure and a follower on the pitch, we need Midfielders who lead, transform games, they make the team tick over! Create chances, score goals!Luiz has improved under Unai, but too little too late…Teliemans changes games, creates more assists, scores goals, and can win games! He anticipates and break lines….. he's a £60M player fr free! Luiz is worth £30M!

It was me lol

Boys. My thoughts around his legs are the sheer amount of games he has played pretty much non stop – Leicester most played player over the last 4 years and two summers of internationals…! No wonder his legs have been tired. Quality signing, if anything happens to one of players I feel more comfortable with Tielemans slotting in over Dendonka. Good convo as always boys

Would love to see Finn Azaz get some minutes for us this season. If we really push on in every cup then there will easily be enough games to introduce him into the side.

I think he could become a starter its up to the other midfielders to fight for their position. (But I wouldnt expect that at the start of the season)

Obviously McGinn is our captain so he starts..

P.s Maybe we will carry on a 4 2 2 2 or 4 2 3 1…so two defensive mf abd two attacking mf with 2 up top (Watkins with Buendia/Bailey or someone else).

The thing about his legs have gone , his running stats say otherwise , this is a great signing for squad depth and for different tactics

Surely he's principally cover / competition for Douglas Luiz? Simple as that. Why do people think that we're selling our senior players when we bring someone in? Emery has already said he wants senior cover for every position, so now we have four holding midfielders to cover two places. I know it's been a log old time since we had decent squad depth, and some younger Villans might never have seen it before, but this is how it's done properly. Get used to it! UTV

Don’t be upset about Carney at Chelsea – he isn’t quite good enough …