Matt Maher: Rival managers making big calls on big players
Conor Coady’s loan switch to Everton this week adds an interesting sub-plot to their match at Villa tomorrow.
The now ex-Wolves skipper is not the only England centre-back to have found himself in an unfamiliar position this summer.
Tyrone Mings has also experienced a tricky period at Villa, having been replaced as captain and then found himself out of the starting line-up for last weekend’s season-opening defeat at Bournemouth. He and Coady are good friends and will no doubt have much to discuss in the players’ lounge post-match.
Coady could make his Everton debut and it will be a strange experience for those of us who have chronicled his career since joining Wolves in 2015. Over the course of seven years, he delivered much more than the club could ever have wished for when they paid Huddersfield £2million for his services.
A fine footballer, he was also an excellent captain and a fine ambassador for Wolves as the club made the transformation under Fosun from Championship also-rans to Europa League contenders. Do not underestimate his importance in ensuring a smooth dressing room transition for the likes of Ruben Neves and Diogo Jota when the club first began spending big money. Coady was everything you could want from a leader and more.
Mings has been similarly influential at Villa, albeit in a slightly shorter timeframe. There is no chance they would have been promoted at the end of the 2018-19 season without his addition on loan midway through the campaign. After then joining permanently for £20m that summer, he played an integral role in first helping the club escape an immediate return to the second tier and then re-establishing itself in the Premier League.
His situation is a little different to Coady’s in that there is no indication, at this point, Villa are willing or even want to move him on this summer. There is also a niggling groin injury to throw into the equation.
Yet while Steven Gerrard’s public comments on Mings might, at times, have been a little clumsy, one thing for certain is a player who, for three-and-a-half years has been among the first names on the team sheet, is no longer guaranteed a place in the starting XI.
In that respect, both Gerrard and Bruno Lage have made big calls this summer, the kind of which manager’s must get right.
