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Phillip Zulu in LEEDS, England
MARVELOUS Nakamba’s English Premiership football stint with Aston Villa is teetering on the brink of relegation as the alarm bells ring loudest at Villa Park, just one season after they had returned to the top-flight.

Villa are precariously sitting second from the bottom with relegation looming from one of the world’s elite football leagues following an unconvincing campaign during the 2019/2020 season, which has already been won by Liverpool.

With no margin for error in the last two games, Villa need maximum points to revive their slim chances of survival. They face in-form Arsenal tomorrow night at home before travelling to West Ham on the last day of the campaign on Sunday.

Nakamba’s arrival at Villa Park sparked a flurry of social media discussions and huge interests among the wider Zimbabwean community based mostly in the UK and across the globe, as they intimately posted solidarity messages of support and gratitude for being the only Zimbabwean export at the moment playing at that highest level of top-flight football.

This was a moment for great hope and stoicism for the Zimbabwe Warriors’ partisanship brigade that was wishing to witness the exploits of our own “King Marve” playing against some of the greatest footballers in world football.

His debut game in a Carabao Cup was a real toast as his deft control and a nutmeg on a sprawling opponent excited even our own most popular fan, Chris “Romario” Musekiwa, who went in a frenzy with Nakamba’s cameo as a substitute.

The Aston Villa crusade to stay in the top-flight football could have been dealt a huge blow way back in October as they struggled to post decent results from the onset and alarmingly, their collective defensive duties crumbled without bravery.

The English Premiership is indeed one of the best, exciting and yet unpredictable leagues in Europe as the dominance of the Spanish La Liga is premised on the top three teams (Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid), with just a handful of other teams making up to eight perennial contenders of the same fixtures.

The Italian Serie A league has lost its glamour as the pulling power shifted to the English Premiership that has a far bigger global reach than all these leagues including the German Bundesliga, the Jupiler in Belgium, the French Ligue 1 and all other smaller European leagues.

This great opportunity to represent Zimbabwe in the English Premiership was an arduous journey of the most hard-working spirited footballer but, looking at the log table and the relegation-bound Aston Villa’s position engulfs our hegemonic power of partisanship support for Nakamba into flames. Nakamba’s demise at Villa Park will have a huge dent on our national game without doubt as we ponder on his next move and the image it will have on the quality of our local talent in English football where the likes of Peter Ndlovu, Bruce Grobbelaar and Benjani Mwaruwaru were impressive.

One fact of life with the English Premiership is that it has become so intense, highly competitive, exciting and pulverising. It has become a league where individual form counts less for collective nail-biting defensive duties of containing opponent attacks, to grind decent results that will steady the ship in murky waters.

This is one shortfall on the spreadsheet of Aston Villa’s defence. They failed to produce decent attacks from wide areas usually utilised by their two wing backs who should be pivotal in starting play from the back and progress the build-up in further wider areas of the opponents, encourage and allow their midfield to consolidate their possession and attacking forward play in central midfield or the final third of attacking.

Their central defenders were shaky and less confident in possession of the ball, they were willing to endure hard knocking battles without the ball but, this one stained decadent quality that is no longer consistent with the modern game more so in the English Premiership.

Top English Premiership central defenders are good ball players and that is hugely evident when one watches the likes of Virgil van Dijk, Gomez and Matip of Liverpool who are the champions of the 2019-20 season.

By carefully analysing the teams below Liverpool, this is the minimum expectation of the back four that includes a top goalkeeper and in Villa’s case, they had more than three keepers in this campaign. The stubborn facts of the modern game are all evident for us to see when we take the Villa situation as a case study of how they failed in the English Premiership, much to our disappointment as Nakamba became exposed in their defensive midfield role that was less expansive in starting play from the back and attempt to use the wing backs progressing play in wide areas of the pitch where Villa lacked so much quality and confidence to stretch the game as opposed to their one way dimension of using their talisman Jack Grealish who was the most fouled player in the league.

That tells you a lot about such a faulty strategy that became too obvious to every Tom, Dick and Harry playing against them every week. The pattern was premeditated in every possession build up from the back, one or two passes amongst themselves then, the third pass was earmarked for Grealish and the next thing was a foul to stop him carrying the ball forward.

Villa were a one-man team all day long and this epitomised their glaring lack of quality in their squad. A couple of games where Grealish didn’t feature due to injuries, the performances dropped and the obvious became evident that their star player was out due to injury.

When one looks at other teams that have managed to build good squads in those areas of defensive duties from the goalkeeper right to the defensive midfielders, they’ve done so with greater insight and tactical masterclass planning. Wolves, Leicester City and Sheffield United are some of the best examples of how to compete in the English Premiership.

Nakamba’s verdict is on the big screen as his adventure in the English Premiership comes to a halting dilemma, a comeuppance of failed English Premiership survival that stalks every top footballer whose signature is on a massive financial undertaking. Nakamba’s situation was made worse by lack of forward play, offensive tactical indulgence and goal scoring stats or attempts.

This severely handicapped his expected performance since he had performed well in the UEFA Champions League with former club Club Brugge in Belgium.

Adapting to the English Premiership has become a tough journey to most footballers and Nakamba is not an exception. This is the sad reality of what awaits any top footballer who steps foot in these shores.

The intensity of the game is nerve-wrecking, the pace, skill and guile, extraordinarily edifying our souls as we watch highly competitive games with so much scrutiny and awe.