The second goal Aston Villa scored against Tottenham is a textbook case of actions that don't appear in the statistics when analysing a game. Boubacar Kamara receives the ball on the edge of the Tottenham box, but it's the run of Marco Asensio that drags Yves Bissouma away and opens the space for Kamara to score. It's an intelligent piece of footballing action, but it won't show up on Asensio's stats at the end of the game.

That action was a good summary of Asensio's influence on the game: subtle and understated. As the commentator noted during the game, Asensio had an incredible start to life at Villa Park. He scored 8 times in his first 9 games for the club but has since failed to find the back of the net. This is a worrying trend to be sure, generally you want your attacking players to be involved as much as possible at the business end of the pitch, but I am always wary of results-based judgements of players.

Asensio might not have scored or assisted against Tottenham, but he was absolutely crucial to Villa's effectiveness against Tottenham. Much to the surprise of everyone, Tottenham came ready to sit deep, absorb pressure, and attack on the counter. It's pretty strange to see Tottenham under Ange set up this way, and Villa certainly seemed surprised in the opening exchanges of the game. They knocked the ball from left to right without any real intent or penetration. Tottenham defended compactly and well and left no space in between the lines. A situation compounded by the absence of Tielemans, who is easily Villa's most creative passer in situations like this.

Naturally, all attention turned to the other creative hub on the pitch, Marco Asensio.

At first, Asensio tried to stay between the lines and receive the ball, turn, and try to find a pass. But, as we've already said, Tottenham were pretty compact. Then halfway through the first half, he dropped to the halfway line to receive the ball, turn, carry the ball forward, skip past two Tottenham players and thread in a beautiful through ball to Watkins, who saw his shot saved by Kinsky.

And suddenly, Asensio knew what he had to do; he wasn't finding the space, time, or opportunity to play the right passes, but Tottenham was vulnerable to ball carrying on the counter. He spent quite a bit of the game dropping to receive the ball and run at the Tottenham defence, troubling them each time. According to FBref, he had 45 carries and 3 progressive carries throughout the game. 45 carries is by far the most he has had for Aston Villa so far in a single game, and 3 progressive carries is the second highest number of progressive carries in a game.

When people think about creativity, they tend to think about the beautiful passing abilities of the maestros like Mesut Ozil and Cesc Fabregas, and understandably so. However, creativity is really about solving problems, especially finding in-game solutions to unforeseen problems. Sometimes the answer is not finding opportunities for slick passing. Sometimes the solution is to drop deep to receive the ball and carry it forward. What I really like about Asensio is not just that he recognised the solution, but that he was able to execute it. You need a certain level of physical strength and guile to run with the ball and dribble as you run, and clearly, Asensio has those tools in his locker. This is no one dimensional creator. And I love multi-dimensional players, teams, managers, and tactics. I certainly am enjoying watching Marco Asensio at the moment.