Joao Gomes to Aston Villa: Wolves repellent from Brazil will be loved by fans at Holte End | Football news

Aston Villa’s midfield rebuild continues with the acquisition of Joao Gomes from Wolves. And while the Brazilian has been caught out by poor performances at Molineux, there are plenty of reasons to believe he could be a popular figure at Villa Park.

It’s a great opportunity to play Champions League football for a player who deserved better than the Premier League. He was Wolves’ player of the season, picking up the fans’ award last year.

His bosses also seem to really like him. “He’s an amazing player,” former Wolves coach Rob Edwards said earlier this year. “It was difficult for him because in a team that has struggled even if you don’t get results, it can be difficult.

Before that, Gary O’Neil had explained why his teammates appreciated the 25-year-old midfielder’s approach to his career. “You want so much to succeed but you never feel like you belong,” O’Neil said. “You get the feeling that it’s a team.”

But what exactly will he bring to Aston Villa?

Fighting. And lots of them. In the past three seasons in the Premier League, Gomes has made 380 tackles, 83 more than any other player in the competition. Once nicknamed ‘The Pitbull’ his fighting style will be noticed even by opposing fans.

In these three seasons, no Premier League player has received the ball more times than Gomes. There must be an element of positional intelligence in this skill, but the most obvious is his strength and skillful use of his body to protect the ball.

Winning it was a key weapon for Wolves last season. Even when it was a very poor team, Gomes ranked among the top 10 players in the Premier League for expected goals scored following his arrival. His front foot approach.

Indeed, Gomes covers the ground well enough to be far from the traditional player who dominates the field. He is a very happy person when he goes for football. He pressed the opposition 1,646 times last season – more than any Aston Villa player under Unai Emery.

He can be an impressive ball-carrier too, averaging around 20 balls per 90 minutes in the Premier League last season. Perhaps surprisingly, that’s more than Morgan Rogers and more than double that of Emi Buendia, John McGinn and Youri Tielemans.

So, one wonders if this chaotic style might be something Emery wants to hone in on rather than let go of. An aggressive and mobile presence in Villa’s midfield would be welcomed but the Villa coach prefers to take control. Expect Gomes to mature.

Other areas of his game will need to improve but there is a feeling that he is a player who can do that. For example, Gomes is rarely praised for his passing range but he is a reliable distributor of the ball and there is time to improve on this.

Genius Sports uses a combination of tracking data and event data to calculate how many passes Premier League players completed compared to the number they could have been expected to complete given the difficulty of the passes attempted.

Gomes is one of half a dozen Premier League players who have outperformed their expected completions by four per cent over the past three seasons. It’s just a small indication that with better options around him, he can thrive.

There may be little hope for Gomes’ goalscoring record given that he only found the net once for Wolves last season. Ironically, that happened in a man-of-the-match game against Aston Villa when he scored the opening goal in a 2-0 win at Molineux.

Speaking to Edwards after that game, it was an opportunity to ask him about Gomes. “I put pressure on him before the game when I talked to him in the training ground before the game,” he said Sky Sports. “I said I wanted something else from him. He stood up really high.”

But it was his last goal in a Wolves shirt, one of just seven in his 116 Premier League appearances to date. It had started with a bang, at least. Gomes came off the bench to score against 10-man Wolves at Southampton in his first game for the club.

Given that Tielemans, despite his Europa League final heroics, did not register a Premier League goal last season, and Villa’s best midfielder in the competition was Ross Barkley with just three, it may not be a priority for Emery.

But if he’s looking for a player coming into his prime with a positive attitude, someone humble off the field but with a real personality on it, then Gomes looks to sell. Expect the tough midfielder’s name to be chanted at the Holte End very soon.