Aston Villa 2017-18 player preview: Tommy Elphick

Tommy Elphick was supposed to be fantastic. He was going to come in and save our defense and make us better than we had been. He was named team captain. (THINK ABOUT THAT!) And in his first match with Aston Villa (after being the first signing under Tony Xia) he looked quite good!

But then he looked less good. And then he looked bad. And pretty quickly, with James Chester and Nathan Baker being good, Elphick disappeared to the periphery. (He. Was. Our. Captain. I almost forgot that.) Now with John Terry around it seemed as if Elphick would be superfluous.

But then Steve Bruce decided to frickin’ sell Nathan Baker. And I mean, I get that. Why hold onto a very good Nathan Baker when you have a perfectly bad Tommy Elphick sitting around? It just makes sense to get rid of the better option and keep the pile of trash.

Sorry, perhaps that was too harsh. Tommy Elphick is perfectly serviceable if you need someone to get you water or to serve as a purpose for writing a few words about. He won’t play much of a role this year and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him leave soon.

And Tommy? When you have a break-out season? You can thank me for writing this. Whatever I write here is destined to be wrong you brilliant man, you.