Although Wednesday evening’s EFL Cup fourth round tie between Aston Villa and Wolverhampton Wanderers saw both sides make significant changes to their starting XI’s for the clash, head coach Nuno Espirito Santo went with a very young and inexperienced lineup and we even had a couple of debuts on the evening.
With Villa having more experience in their side, there’s little surprise it turned into a disappointing night as we fell out of the competition with a 2-1 defeat, but I don’t think our next generation did themselves much harm at all.
It was an experience, it’ll serve them well for their development and we rested our key players for the battles ahead.
One of our more experienced players on the night was 20-year-old Ruben Vinagre, and again defensively he proved to be a concern for quite a few fans on social media when it came to that side of his game, and they wanted to see more on an attacking front.
Vinagre at fault again.
— Rich (@Richwolves64) October 30, 2019
Vinagre ball watching
— HMS Wolves (@AdeBriggs) October 30, 2019
Vinagre should do better tracking the run. Nice goal from Villa tho.
— Sam Gollings (@sjgollings) October 30, 2019
Vinagre in a team full of kids looks like a kid. Given the ball away just as much as he does when playing with the seniors. Just not good enough… Yet. ????
— Jay Aldridge (@jayaldridge50) October 30, 2019
Honestly just play Vinagre as Jota's alternative at LW when we use 3-4-3 and let him forget about his defensive responsibilities because he can't do it anyway. #wwfc
— Sam (@SamCarpenter_) October 30, 2019
Vinagre really loves to run at his defenders. Just needs to get…a little better at it
— Alex Berrill (@BlackCatHamlet) October 30, 2019
Vinagre was up against significant experience and for me, he was far from our worst player on the night, so the criticism feels a little over the top here given the defensive unit on show. Like others, his game will round out with greater experience and age.
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