Aston Villa star has been the ‘worst player on the pitch’ at times this season.
Tielemans arrived at Villa Park amid much fanfare in the summer window, but Jacobs believes the former Leicester City midfielder has failed to match any expectations so far this season.
A transfer which was considered one of the steals of the summer, Aston Villa snatched Tielemans at the end of his contract with Leicester, beating plenty of competition from across the continent to his signature. Fancied to go on and establish himself in the Villans starting 11 right away, it hasn’t been the case for Tielemans up until this point, with the Belgian having struggled for game time.
In the Premier League so far this season Tielemans is yet to start a match for Aston Villa, with all of his six appearances having come from the substitutes bench. A surprise, given the excitement surrounding his move to Villa Park, Tielemans has not yet done enough to convince manager Unai Emery that he’s worthy of starting minutes in the Premier League.
The former Anderlecht man was handed a starting role for Aston Villa’s midweek League Cup clash against Everton, which ended in disaster for the West Midlands outfit, who lost 2-1 to the relegation candidate. Tielemans, who picked up an astonishingly low 4.9 rating from Fotmob, was adjudged to have been at fault for one of the Everton goals and had his time on the pitch cut short by a second-half substitution.
A horrific showing for Tielemans and one which is predicted to have set his hopes of starting for Aston Villa in the league back even further.
When quizzed about the midfielder’s start to life at Aston Villa, journalist Jacobs admitted that Tielemans doesn’t have the trust of manager Emery and believes that he’s likely to spend more time on the bench than the pitch this season. Pointing towards his woeful performance against Everton as the main contributing factor, the reliable reporter expects Tielemans to be frozen out of the Aston Villa side, unless the Belgian international can display a change of character over the comings weeks and month:
“You sort of see these two extremes with Tielemans. He’s either a leader and incredible, or he can be very poor and very demotivated. At Leicester, at times there was very little between those two extremes and I think at the moment Aston Villa are seeing the worst of Tielemans.
“You sort of see these two extremes with Tielemans. He’s either a leader and incredible, or he can be very poor and very demotivated. At Leicester, at times there was very little between those two extremes and I think at the moment Aston Villa are seeing the worst of Tielemans.
“Tielemans has to show them what he can do in training to kind of earn back a bit of trust from Emery to get into the starting lineup.
“The harsh truth is that against Everton, which was a very poor loss for Aston Villa, Tielemans was the worst player on the field. He was dreadful in possession, he was sloppy, he was not focused on the task at hand. So it’s understandable that there is fresh criticism. And I think that he did nothing unfortunately in that game to show Emery that he’s worth starting at the moment in the Premier League.”
