The Athletic’s Gregg Evans has claimed that Aston Villa’s Tyrone Mings would have been ‘furious’ after being dropped by manager Dean Smith.
Going into their recent match against West Ham United, Villa had lost their previous three league games. Evidently, Smith was keen to change things up to put a stop to his club’s slide.
With that in mind, he decided to drop the Villa captain to the bench. The move didn’t really work, though, as he later had to bring Mings on after Ezri Konsa was sent off. To make things worse, the Hammers went on to win the game 4-1.
Was Dean Smith right to drop Tyrone Mings?
Yes
No
While speaking on the 1874 podcast, Evans has now stated that this ‘massive call’ would have left the English defender not very happy at all.
He said: “It felt almost to me like he was trying to stamp his authority down on this and saying, ‘well, if I drop Tyrone Mings, I can drop any of you’.
“And that’s almost a warning to the rest of the team, that if you don’t perform, then you will get dropped. It’s a massive call to drop your captain. It’s a huge, huge call.”
“Bizarrely, Mings ended up coming on in the end anyway because Konsa got sent off. So it just didn’t have the impact that it wanted and Mings would have been furious at that dropping as well.”
TIF Thoughts on Tyrone Mings and Aston Villa…
Considering the club’s poor run of form throughout October, it’s not hard to see why Smith was so keen to make a statement to his players. However, when you drop a key player, such as the club captain, you run the risk of looking silly if you lose.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened to the Villa boss. Now, with Konsa suspended for their next game, it’s more than likely that Mings will come straight back into the starting lineup.
If the English centre-back can put a good performance in that outing, however, Smith may well feel that his plan ultimately worked. For now, though, it seems as if he only succeeded in angering Mings and losing another Premier League match.
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