Aston Villa YouTuber Max Stokes has been sharing his praise for Villa winger Bertrand Traore after he made his debut for the Birmingham club in their midweek Carabao Cup victory over Bristol City.
This comes after Stokes recently made an appearance on The Villa View Podcast to reflect on Villa’s 3-0 win over the Championship side.
On the subject of Traore, who scored his first goal for Dean Smith’s side in the match, Stokes had this to say on the winger and his goal.
He said: “I know he’s very left-footed and you can see there’s a replay after [Traore’s goal] where he looks at Henri Lansbury and he’s laughing, so does that mean he didn’t mean it? But if he did mean it, that’s incredible, just to loft it softly over the ‘keeper, that’s incredible. And he had a really, really good game, he looked like there is a genuine bit of quality there with Bertrand Traore.
“He’s got pace, he’s [powerful], he’s big, he’s strong, so [a] great player we’ve got there – admittedly, yes, it is against inferior opposition, but we’ve got a good player there.”
Villa recently signed Traore from French club Olympique Lyon in a deal worth a reported fee of £17 million.
In the game against Bristol, Traore scored a wonderful volleyed goal in the first half to double Villa’s lead on the night and ultimately earned himself a match rating of 7.94/10 for his overall performance (per WhoScored).
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Before making the move to Villa, Traore, who is currently valued at £8.55 million, made 126 appearances for Lyon in which he managed to score 33 goals and provide 17 assists along the way (per Transfermarkt).
TIF Thoughts…
Traore certainly got his Villa career off to a good start with a goal and a solid performance against Bristol. Hopefully, for everyone at the Birmingham club, Traore can keep this level of quality up for the rest of the season in a Villa shirt.