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Aly Cissokho spent the first half of the 2015-16 season enjoying life in Portugal on loan to his old club Porto. Many Villa fans assumed that his time at the club was done, but then Jordan Amavi hurt his knee and Aly Cissokho was recalled by Rémi Garde and slotted into the starting lineup as soon as he was eligible again.
Now, he wasn’t great, but he was better than Kieran Richardson. The big problems were twofold: a propensity for big errors at important times and an inability to do much when he got forward. That’s not good, but when he wasn’t making the mistakes, Cissokho was a pretty solid defensive player.
Cut out the mistakes and he’s a perfectly capable backup. And given the fact that Amavi is returning to full health (as well as a pretty nice attacking performance in the friendly against Middlesbrough) we can expect to see a fair bit of Cissokho, at least in the early part of the season.
He’s not going to win Villa many matches, but he seems unlikely to lose them too many, either.