As a longtime Onomah defender, I've been watching him pretty closely this season, watched a handful of Villa games when he's played.
I think it's important to remember:
a) The #1 goal was to get Josh minutes in senior football, and he has. He will likely make 40+ appearances for a team battling for promotion, often from the start.
b) He's playing out of position A LOT. Bruce has used him all over the place, from #10 to right wing to occasionally nearly as a striker in a 4-4-2.
c) He plays in a style that has almost nothing in common with ours. He is a midfield passer/dribbler in a team that is averaging under 50% possession this season. They mostly rely on wide players to either create (Snodgrass, Adomah, Grealish) for their limited, box-hanging strikers (Hogan, Davis) or cut inside and shoot.
d) Most importantly, Aston Villa fans have ZERO investment in him as a young player, so they will obviously be unreasonably harsh on him. He's the automatic spacegoat for just about anything that goes wrong in that team (think: Fraizer Campbell post-Berba). Especially someone who doesn't naturally show as much "pashun" as others.
e) The "success" of a player on loan doesn't always matter. Think about how many uninspiring loans Kane, Mason, and Carroll had as teenagers.
All that said, I think it's been a decent success. Obviously, stats aren't everyone's cup of tea, but this radar shows that he's been pretty productive overall. A central midfielder who puts up solid passing, dribbling, and tackling stats in the Championship as a 20 year-old is a good sign. The dispossession number makes me nervous, but considering he's played way further up the pitch than he would at Spurs, I think it can be forgiven. However, if he ever is going to make it here as a central midfielder (the only possible position he'd make it at here), Poch needs to trust him not to lose the ball in central midfield. That will be crucial.
. <a href="
https://t.co/gf12qcF5XQ">pic.twitter.com/gf12qcF5XQ</a></p>— Ted Knutson (@mixedknuts) <a href="
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I think there's a spot in our future for Onomah. I think he possesses a pretty rare combination of skills and physical traits, and I think he'd do a really good job if played next to someone like Dier or possibly Dembele against lesser competition. Ultimately, he went to Villa to get high-pressure games, and he's certainly done that. Hopefully, it'll pay off for us in the future.