Player #843 for Aston Villa, Karim El Ahmadi played as a midfielder for the club in Villa’s 2012-13 and 2013-14 Premier League campaigns, making 56 appearances and scoring three goals.

El Ahmadi was born in Enschede, Holland on 27 January 1985.

Paul Lambert had signed El Ahmadi from Feyenoord for £2,520,000 on 2 July 2012 and he sadly proved to be another in a long recent line of expensive midfielders brought into the club by successive managers who didn’t possess the necessary abilities to cope with top flight football. O’Leary had Djemba Djemba, O’Neill had Salifou and Houllier had Makoun. Now Lambert was starting his own path with El Ahmadi. He did play more than his predecessors but the end result was the same, an expensive experiment that ended quickly once realisation hit.

Lambert handed El Ahmadi his debut aged 27 in the opening game of the 2012-13 season in Villa’s 0-1 defeat to West Ham United on Saturday, 18 August 2012 and he went on to feature in Villa’s first 9 Premier League squads of the season, starting every game and scoring his first goal for the club in wretched 1-3 home defeat to Everton on Saturday, 22 September 2012. But as became increasingly familiar with Lambert, El Ahmadi was another player who suddenly disappeared from the scene.

After 9 starts in 9 games, El Ahmadi saw 4 starts in the next 25 games.

2013-14 saw the season start with the bewildering Lambert still in post and once again he began the campaign with El Ahmadi as a regular starter. Indeed unlike the previous season, El Ahmadi featured in every squad bar two, making 33 appearances across Villa’s 41 games.

El Ahmadi had scored his second goal for Villa, notching the opener in the 3-2 Premier League win over Manchester City on Saturday, 28 September 2013 and he added a second goal of the season and third in total on Monday, 25 November 2013 helping Villa to an away draw at lowly West Bromwich Albion.

El Ahmadi also contributed an assist a couple of games later setting up Libor Kozák to help Villa to another 3-2 Premier League win at Southampton on Wednesday, 4 December 2013. That would prove to be the last creative contribution El Ahmadi made however.

Despite having been a virtual ever present in the squad under Lambert, in his second season with the club El Ahmadi made his final appearance as a 46’ substitute for the hapless Jordan Bowery in Villa’s 0-3 defeat at Tottenham Hotspur on the final day of the season, Sunday, 11 May 2014.

El Ahmadi made one final squad appearance on the opening day of the 2014-15 season remaining an unused substitute in Villa’s 1-0 win at Stoke City on Saturday, 16 August 2014.

El Ahmadi returned to Feyenoord in September 2014 for a fee of £630,000, a £2,000,000 loss on Lambert’s investment, aged 29.

El Ahmadi had played under Paul Lambert.