Feel bad for him. He's literally isolated every time he attacks on the right. Whoever plays there tends to always comes towards the center of the pitch. There's no real overlapping from him as the man he should be going around is nowhere to be seen on that side of the pitch. Obviously, in a 3-5-2, he's expected to do a little more work but it we've not used the formation enough to judge him.
Agreed. Valencia is getting a bit of a hard time on here just now, generally isolated from any teammates in attack.
He will never be the most direct or adventurous full back. There will always be some risk-averse passing and positioning, always offering support during periods of possession but never fully utilising the opportunities available to him offensively.
However, he has shown enough to be considered good enough for this side at the moment and several other areas of the team require improvement before Valencia’s position is called into question(namely left back, no. 10 and right wing).
We do have a massive problem down the right hand side in that no-one seems to want to play in that attacking right sided spot. The extent to which Mata(especially) and Lingard drift around and vacate any sort of balanced position is ridiculous, to the point where I would be tempted to say it’s instruction. It can’t be though, it is too unstructured - they are all over the place and are significantly blunting our effectiveness going forward.
Valencia often receives the ball with the only passing options being square to a central midfielder or back to a centre half. We need more, and better, options. Lukaku showing to feet or running into the channel (he can do both and does seem more comfortable playing inside right), a wide man on the touch line or in the space between the centre back, left back and centre mid (the main issue, our nominal player here being nowhere near where he should be, in no position to dovetail with the fullback to progress the play).
I struggle to think of fullbacks who could consistently produce under these circumstances. Other than Marcelo, I can’t name anyone capable of attacking, of effectively penetrating a defence, without linking with teammates. Typically not the kind of players who can create individually, the best fullbacks effectively run off the ball - one-twos, overlaps, underlaps, third-man runs.
With how unbalanced our side is at the moment, Valencia barely has a chance. There’s really no-one out there who can offer more right now and players like Aurier and Walker are not of a higher calibre. Tony is slightly reserved as top fullbacks go, but he has shown that when he has others to play off of he can be effective - looking to pass and move and purposefully get in behind teams. His main weak point for me, since becoming a right back, is that he almost always looks to receive the ball to feet before doing so. He appears unwilling to make a positive off the ball run when others have the ball, maintaining a deeper supporting position and only coming alive when he personally gains possession.
I think this exacerbates the problem that we’ve got - at the moment Valencia consistently receives the ball in areas in front of the opposition, and almost always has no good forward passing options, and so constantly looks to do two things - recycle possession and cross from poor areas. I’m not holding that against him, for me he has shown he has enough quality to play there and the player(s) in front of him are the ones who warrant scrutiny.
