is he vital though? not for me he isn't. i'm not calling for him to be dropped and never play for the club again! i just don't feel he is a necessity all the time. for instance, when villa were down to ten men, he was a complete waste of a player. a more attacking player was required because tettey was blocking everything from villa on his own and johnson wasn't good enough to affect the game going forwards, to utilise the space. a player with more vision was required - that man is fox or howson or butterfield or even surman, but not johnson. so what i'm saying is that although its important to use johnson in some games, more often than not he isn't going to affect a game in a positive way. one holding player would be better on those occasions and that frees up a more creative player to take on his role. its already been proved that johnson isn't a good holding player on his own as he doesn't possess the discipline to play that role alone, and tettey is a bigger, stronger, more dynamic version of johnson, someone better in every department. why play johnson ahead of him? play him alongside him, sure, but only when the time is right. i'll push the boat out here and say had surman come on for johnson, we'd have won that game. that little extra creativity and quality would have made all the difference. we didn't require two 'destroyers' against a midfield lacking bite. stoke may be different.
