Tom Cleverley kicks off his stay at Aston Villa with a 1-0 win at Liverpool and must now kickstart his career too

“Cleverley had no physique, was wiry as hell, but he was as brave as a lion, had good feet and could score a goal.”

It’s fair to say that Sir Alex Ferguson’s assessment of Tom Cleverley hasn’t always struck a chord with supporters of Manchester United and England. His account of a 2010 conversation with then United chief executive David Gill feels particularly pertinent in light of his Old Trafford struggles.

“David Gill said one day, ‘What are you going to do with Cleverley next year? He’s scoring a lot of goals at Watford.’ My answer was, ‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, I’m going to play him, to find out whether he can score goals for me as well as Watford.’ Could he score six for me?

“If Cleverley could score six goals from midfield, he would become a consideration. The demarcation line was always: what can they do and what can they not do? The can-do question was: can they win me the game? If they could score six goals, I could ignore some of the negatives.”

After 79 appearances in a Manchester United shirt, Ferguson and the rest are still left waiting for that sixth goal. Indeed, in 35 matches for club and country last season, Cleverley came up with just one of them – against Aston Villa, the club with which he now hopes to reignite his career on loan.

Football can be a fickle business and there is nothing unique about a young player losing his way. And yet, the case of Cleverley feels particularly curious given that the typical explanations of injury and inopportunity are not obviously applicable in this instance.

Instead, this is a 25-year-old player apparently still searching for his identity. “My job goes under the radar at times,” he told the Daily Mirror earlier this year. “I am not a player who's going to beat three or four people and stick it in the top corner or go round tackling people like Roy Keane.”

For a player booed at Wembley in March and the victim of an online petition calling for his international axe, it rather demands an answer to the question - what are Cleverley’s strengths? After all, while it’s evidently possible to dismiss the qualities of tackling, dribbling and goalscoring in a single sentence, that trio of talents are highly regarded by football fans for a good reason.

Jack Wilshere caught the eye on Saturday with a robust midfield performance for Arsenal in which he won possession of the ball 12 times in the match, providing one of the game’s highlights as he sauntered past Gael Clichy before finishing beyond Joe Hart. Tacking, dribbling and scoring. Pah.

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But Cleverley has other qualities. The ability to retain possession is something he prides himself on. “I watch Spanish football a lot. If they pass the ball sideways but keep possession, the fans clap them. Their attitude is that as long as you have got the ball, the other team can’t hurt you.

“I know the mentality is different here but sometimes I have got to not listen and play my game because I feel I’m doing the best thing for the team. I feel I’ve been made a scapegoat a little bit. A few people in the media certainly seem to have a perception of me not doing much in the team.”

Problem

The problem for Cleverley is the risk that his perceived strength can become an affectation. Last season he ranked among the top 20 Premier League players for passing accuracy and passing accuracy in the opposition half. But when it came to making a difference, an issue emerged.

Of the 36 players with an 84 per cent pass success rate in the opposition half, just seven created fewer chances. Of those, only Jose Canas and Leon Britton scored fewer goals, while eight-goal Lukas Podolski and the much-maligned John Obi Mikel were the only two with fewer interceptions.

It all adds to the nagging suspicion that Cleverley had turned ineffective into an art form – playing for playing’s sake. At a club like Manchester United where the onus is usually on the team to make things happen, particularly amid the travails of last term, it had become a toxic combination.

Intriguingly however, it is precisely this ability to keep hold of the ball that could become so useful to Paul Lambert and his Aston Villa team. For while Wilshere took the plaudits for his effervescent performance in the early kick-off, the Arsenal man did have to settle for a draw. Meanwhile, Cleverley’s Villa are celebrating an unlikely three points after a 1-0 win against Liverpool.

It wasn’t just the fact this was Cleverley’s first career victory at Anfield that will have felt novel. For all United’s struggles last season, they still averaged over 55 per cent of the ball. This was a taste of life at Villa, a team that ranks among the bottom three for possession both last year and this.

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Hard graft without the ball is a necessity in this side and the early signs on his debut were positive. The Premier League tracking data reveals that in his 86 minutes on the pitch, Cleverley made more high-intensity sprints (50) than any other player on either team. Tracking runners. It was a battle.

And it could have been a chastening experience. As recently as November it was Cleverley in the England starting line-up to face Germany with Jordan Henderson on the bench and new team-mate Fabian Delph barely in Roy Hodgson’s thoughts. But this was no time to mope.

Here he was doing the dirty work in a Villa shirt, tracking back with 20 minutes remaining to dispossess Henderson as the visitors scrapped for the points. No Villa player won more duels.

Possession was at a premium for Lambert’s side, but Cleverley did more than anyone to help retain a certain calmness to proceedings. His pass completion rate was 85.0 per cent – the next best by a Villa player was 77.4 per cent. In the opposition half, Cleverley’s rate was 85.7 per cent despite no team-mate bettering 70 per cent. He lost possession less than any other midfielder on the pitch.

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This is the control that Lambert will be hoping Cleverley can provide and he appears confident that smoothness in possession could be just the start. “I know he’s a top player,” he told reporters this week. “He has natural ability in abundance and that’s something you do not lose.

“I feel we needed somebody like him – he’s got goals in him and can hit the penalty box. I’ll try and fit him into the way we’re playing and once he’s out there he’ll play the game with his own eyes. He still has great potential to kick on in his career.”

Cleverley might not see himself as the next Roy Keane and he could well fall short of the goalscoring targets set by Paul Lambert. But working with these two quality midfielders might yet be the making of him. There’s a player in there somewhere. Tom Cleverley just needs to find him.