Jhon Durán: Chaos Wrangler
Aston Villa’s number nine summons the forces of bedlam and does with them as he pleases
The removal of FA Cup replays where Premier League clubs don’t want them was eased through with the agreement of the National League. Since then, we’ve been waiting to find out what was used to grease the wheels.
Part of the answer is the National League Cup.
According to the National League’s announcement, it’s “a new competition for first teams of National League clubs and Premier League 2 sides” and will begin next month.
According to me, it’s a new competition in which some non-league teams play some Premier League B-teams and it’ll benefit the Premier League (and EFL) clubs more than the National League ones.
The sell, one assumes, was that Tottenham Hotspur playing at Dagenham & Redbridge will swell the gate. But for that to work, the competition itself needs to carry some weight. The involvement of B-teams kills that prospect and we’ve seen that before.
I’m yet to see any adequate justification for scrapping replays in the FA Cup. If this is it, the opposition at the time of the decision would seem to have had right on its side.
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Jhon Durán: Chaos Wrangler
Aston Villa lead 2-0 against Young Boys at the Stadion Wankdorf in Bern. It’s Villa’s first appearance in Europe’s top continental competition since 1983, when they were deposed as champions by Juventus, who went on to lose the final against German opposition one day short of a year after Villa had won theirs.
The Villans haven’t qualified in the UEFA Champions League era until now. Their game in the capital of Switzerland is the start of a new format for the competition that’s named, loosely, after the country in which they’re currently winning. After an hour, star striker Ollie Watkins is withdrawn.
His replacement is Jhon Durán – in scoring terms, the form player of the two. After quarter of an hour on the field, the Colombian pulls out his party trick.
Jacob Ramsey picks him out right on the edge of the Young Boys penalty area and he snaps in a left-footed strike like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Durán hasn’t yet earned a starting place in the Villa team but he has proven a nerveless finisher. He’s lethal. Alas, like Watkins in the first half, he’s made to wait for his first Champions League goal. Villa win 3-0 but Amadou Onana’s handball way back in the build-up leads to Durán’s effort being scrubbed off.
In the maelstrom of Durán’s hard-hittin’, screamer-scorin’, headline-hoggin’ start to 2024/25, it’s easy to forget that his goals at the end of 2023/24 season were the ones that put Villa within touching distance of the fourth-placed finish that took them to Bern in the first place.
Villa’s final home game of last season was against Liverpool. Defeat would have given Tottenham Hotspur one last lift in what was starting to look like a quest in vain to drag Villa out of the top four. Anything else and Villa could be confident of reaching new heights in their post-promotion resurgence.
It was an incredible match. Emiliano Martínez fumbled the ball into his own net with just a minute played. Youri Tielemans struck back before Liverpool scored twice more, first through Cody Gakpo and then courtesy of an unstoppable Jarell Quansah header. VAR interventions in each of those goals and a few more besides made for a dramatic evening.
Durán came on in the 79th minute. He threw his weight around. He scored in the 85th minute. He scored again in the 88th minute. Villa Park celebrated the equaliser like few before it. He’s a big man for a big occasion and he ensured eight more of them with a late brace on a special night.
An awful lot happened between Birmingham in May and Bern in September. Apparent flaws in Durán’s attitude and commitment had been hinted at in comments made by team-mates during the preceding season and he was assumed for most of the summer to be heading for the exit.
The expected destination, one way or another, was London. Of course it was London. He might have ended up at Chelsea as part of the thinly veiled mutually beneficial dealings between the clubs, which in the end took only Omari Kellyman to Stamford Bridge and the rather more expensive Ian Maatsen the other way.
There was also interest from West Ham United. The interest was infamously mutual. Then Villa showed up at the London Stadium in August. Durán came off the bench for the visitors and won the game with the same finish he produced against Young Boys a few weeks later. It was the moment Durán ascended the throne as Villa’s king of chaos.
Goals are the currency of forgiveness in football contrition helps too. Durán has shown as much of it as a man like him ever can. He hasn’t lost the cocky edge. If anything, the notoriety he earned by throwing up the hammers and then seeing off the Hammers has taken him to another level.
The swagger’s been there all along. Durán moved from Envigado in Colombia to Major League Soccer and Chicago Fire, where he made his debut in February 2022.
Players of Durán’s ilk tend to shine quickly in MLS. Young strikers with the ability to score in the Premier League stand out in front of goal. They move that little bit differently. Their physical dominance seems to come easily. They finish naturally.
It’s not always obvious, but it’s there – the future leaking into the present. Durán was a teenager in the United States, supremely confident and eminently capable but raw and rash and rough around the edges. Villa saw enough and signed him within a year, a month after his nineteenth birthday.
In his first days in England, Durán was filmed sitting in an empty Holte End. Turning to his left, he watched a personal address on the big screen from another Colombian Villa striker.
Juan Pablo Ángel had a tough start to his own life in the West Midlands but enjoyed a special connection with Villa supporters, many of whom believed that their collective action had persuaded spendthrift chairman Doug Ellis to bring him in.
Ángel was an extraordinary player who took his time to get going. He means something at Villa. He’s admired. Like Durán, Ángel is a child of Medellín who found his way to Birmingham and the Premier League. It was an inspiring moment. One suspects Durán isn’t the sort who needs inspiration.
At the time of writing, Durán has four Premier League goals in 2024/25 and all of them have come off the bench. Three of them were winners, first at West Ham and then at Leicester City before his astonishing late screamer against Everton. Villa have won every game in which he’s scored, albeit across a small sample size. Deadly is as deadly does.
His goal return per 90 minutes is freakishly high at this stage of the season but it wasn’t far off one-in-one in 2023/24. In total, Durán has scored nine league goals for Villa and started only three times in the Premier League.
Yet his super-sub label seems too reductive. It’s not the act of coming off the bench to win a game that captures the essence of Durán but the fact that he can be dropped into the mess of a Premier League match in its latter stages and corral the chaos. He’s not fazed or distracted. He thrives in it.
Early indications suggest that Durán is shooting more regularly and more accurately than he did last season. On average he’s nearly trebling his number of shots on target per 90 minutes. His performance versus expected goals (xG) was excellent last term and looks to be holding up just fine, thank you. For every 90 minutes played, Durán has scored more than 1.25 goals more than xG.
That’s remarkable. Only Danny Ings, who’s only taken two shots in quarter of an hour of Premier League football this season, outranks him on that metric.
So why is it that one of the Premier League’s top scorers, one of its most lethal finishers in the form of his life, is also its joint-most frequently used substitute?
There are two possible answers to that.
The first is logical. Ollie Watkins is Villa’s best striker and Unai Emery only plays with one. Watkins is first choice on merit – despite occasionally hitting patches where goals are harder to come by and missing all of Villa’s pre-season matches this summer, the simple fact is that Watkins has played for Villa since 2020 and never let them down for a second.
Banging in goals as easily as breathing has inevitably given rise to calls for Durán to play from the start but Watkins is one of the most important players in and out of possession in a team that’s won four out of five matches and is third in the table. Emery would tell you there’s no dilemma at all.
The second reason is more intricate. Starting a match and coming off the bench are different. The context changes.
At twenty years of age, Durán is already a master of the difficult skill of picking up the pace of a game after being thrown into it. In fact, he’s such a force of character that he alters the very gravity of it.
That makes him an exceptional talent but it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s capable of defining the match in the same way from kick-off. Watkins sets the tone. Durán kicks the tone to smithereens.
Villa are reaping the benefits of having both and, for now, being able to balance their contributions. How long that’s acceptable for everyone concerned remains to be seen.
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Salty beef extracts
The Beef: Daniel Storey (High Protein Beef Paste)
My day as Harrogate Town’s assistant manager (i)
Why the ‘screamer’ will never die (i)
Aston Villa vs Young Boys: It's more than 'just' a game (House of V)
Gary Shaw, hero of Aston Villa’s 1982 European Cup triumph, dies aged 63 (The Guardian)
Gary Shaw: Hometown Boy (Unexpected Delirium)
This Manchester United team specialise in not doing as well as might be expected (The Observer)
The Contract Crisis in Women’s Football (Maldini’s Chain)
“We played a really shit first half.”
I make no apologies for the Aston Villa-heavy issue this week. Sometimes it’s best to write what you know. And sometimes your manager swears on Match of the Day.
Dessert
The Vivid Horizon pack from adidas puts the Predator, F50 and Copa boots into this very fetching red, grey and black colourway. Beaut.
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Apparently National League clubs weren’t consulted over the National League Cup
Interesting. Seems to be a common thread with football decisions at the moment.