The Athletic’s Tim Spiers has recently aired some criticism of Wolverhampton Wanderers’ French wing-back Rayan Ait-Nouri.
During the summer transfer window, the Old Gold sealed the arrival of the 19-year-old defender from Angers SCO on a season-long loan deal with an option to make the move permanent (per Wolves).
Since his arrival, the Frenchman has made two appearances for Wolves in the Premier League in which he has scored one goal and not provided an assist (per Transfermarkt).
While Ait-Nouri picked up an impressive 8.04/10 match rating in the 2-0 victory against Crystal Palace, he delivered a much weaker 5.77/10 in the 1-0 loss against Leicester City (per WhoScored).
During the latest episode of The Athletic’s The Molineux View podcast, Spiers aired some criticism of the left wing-back when dissecting the defeat against the Foxes.
Responding with his thoughts on Ait-Nouri’s overall performance, he said: “Not great. Defensively, not bad apart from a couple of obvious errors, but lacking going forward, really.
“I stuck out a tweet early in the second half after he’d had two free opportunities to cross the ball with his left foot with no pressure from the defence and neither ball beat the first man.
“So, [they were] real wasted opportunities to get the ball in the box and he’s supposed to be quite good at crossing, so I stuck out a tweet saying, ‘Need more from him’ and a few people said, ‘Give him a break, he’s a kid.’
“Wolves can’t afford passengers, really, especially when you’ve got Fernando Marcal on the bench or Pedro Neto could maybe play there in an attacking formation.
“So, if he’s not going to do the basics right of crossing, then you’ve got to say, maybe look at something else for the time being if he’s going to have these inconsistent performances.”
TIF Thoughts on Tim Spiers’ criticism of Rayan Ait-Nouri…
As can be seen in what the journalist had to say, he believes that the wing-back should perhaps be dropped if he cannot get the basics right and make simple crosses.
Do you agree that Rayan Ait-Nouri was not good enough against Leicester City?
No, he just needs time
Yes, he needs to be better
Following the Old Gold’s 1-0 defeat to Leicester, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Frenchman has come under fire as his 5.77/10 match rating made him Wolves’ second-worst performer on the day.
The £18m-rated wing-back also recorded a weak passing success percentage of 76.7%, making him the third-least accurate passer for Wolves of those players which started the game.
So, hopefully, following the international break, Ait-Nouri can return to performances similar to what he delivered against the Eagles rather than what he did against the Foxes.