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Phillip Zulu in LEEDS, England
THE 2020-21 English Premiership football season starts soon in the midst of the slowing down restrictions on the deadly coronavirus pandemic that has affected every facet of human life.

Our only export in the English Premiership at Aston Villa, Marvelous Nakamba, looks increasingly more likely to have another run with the Midlands-based club at Villa Park.

Nakamba’s debut season in England has seen mixed reactions from fans, pundits and the coaching staff who see differently from the expectations of how Villa should fight their battles of either surviving in the Premiership or aiming for trophies.

My own submission as someone who follows his fixtures, I definitely would be excited and interested about his personal continuous development in terms of adapting to one of the most competitive leagues in the world and be able to perform to the highest possible levels of abilities that will raise his profile and pedigree as a top professional player.

Our stock as the Zimbabwe national team should always rise when we have our players playing in this exciting league hence our fixation on Nakamba’s performance at every turn and the majority of Warriors’ fans undoubtedly cherish to witness revived and impressive displays from their defensive midfielder.

Basking in the glory of escaping relegation in the last game of the season is only ephemeral for Aston Villa, the reality is dawning on them as they start their first home game of the new season against Sheffield United on September 20.

Their opening game of the season against Manchester City has been postponed and that gives them a reprieve of the clashes and grinding duels of the first weekend fixtures of the English Premiership.

Nakamba’s confidence should get better this term, his composure on the ball in his own defensive third in possession is encouraging but the build-up of the forward and offensive play is the delicate missing part in the jigsaw puzzle of his overall performance.

Fingers crossed, I hope Aston Villa will revisit their strategy of using their talisman Jack Grealish as the one way link-up play maker and bring in a new expansive mix of using wing backs with good attacking instincts and offensive play.

When everything is highly concentrated and congested on one man link play, mediocrity sets in as inertia of complementary competent abilities is subdued.

In a far more advanced role of an attacking midfielder who gives the offensive tactical strategy its dimension and vision, Grealish would have more energy and dynamism in executing the final ball in these areas of the game where Villa lacked the cutting edge so much.

Once this traction and trajectory is established in Villa’s midfield defensive and attacking mix, then the balance of play should expand on the wide areas of the wing-backs to help build sustainable attacks by using width and lessen the tendency of using a congested defensive midfield build up that has denied Nakamba any basic tactical indulgence in his overall performance.

The complexity of Villa’s situation last season is highly understandable in terms of how they returned back to the Premiership after some years of fighting tougher encounters of the English Championship division.

Nakamba will be under serious scrutiny as all expectations of better performances will be high amongst the fans all over the world. He is injury free and he has tasted the pudding of the tough English Premiership League and any excuses will receive less commiserations.

He has the fight of his life on track and the magnitude of how best to deal with any setbacks of last season, is the reason of my insightful expectations and an encouragement on Nakamba that he has the ability to play at this top level without any doubt.

A new season is in the air and we hope the international fixtures for the Zimbabwe national team should be a huge confidence building platform for Nakamba as we take on Algeria in the Africa Cup of Nations qualification back-to-back group fixture scheduled for November.

We also have the World Cup encounters that should help him to recover from a debut season with so many conflicting points.

We hope he stays injury-free and gives us those measured performances in our Zimbabwean midfield team so that we can contain Algeria in AFCON and Ghana in the Qatar World Cup 2022 qualification.

These two major tournaments are likely to be the turning point of our football in Zimbabwe as our foreign-based players have increased abundantly with new emerging talents in UK, Germany and Spain, raising our hope of qualifying for the first World Cup tournament.

Nakamba’s coat is cut to his cloth, his fight should be staying in the Premiership at all costs by posting convincing performances and then help our Warriors in AFCON and Qatar World Cup 2022 qualifications.