Adam Aznou in action for Malaga at La Rosaleda Stadium
Adam Aznou in action for Malaga at La Rosaleda Stadium
The 20-year-old left-back joined the La Liga outfit on a season-long loan deal in the summer.
After signing for Everton from Bayern Munich in last year's summer window, he was a player who was always going to require patience.
David Moyes handed him two competitive appearances for the Toffees, one last season and one in the Carabao Cup this term.
However, the Moroccan international didn't do enough to convince Moyes of his first-team readiness, and was thus loaned out.
Unfortunately, his performance on Saturday perhaps will tell Malaga that he's not quite ready yet for them either.
What did Adam Aznou do in Malaga's defeat to Racing Santander?
Saturday afternoon saw Malaga host Racing Santander in La Liga, with the home side sitting bottom of the Spanish top flight.
Malaga are yet to win a single one of their opening 12 league games this season, and Racing dished out their seventh defeat of the campaign.
Aznou started the game at left-back, but was walking a tightrope after 38 minutes when he was shown a yellow card.
Unfortunately, he couldn't keep out of the referees' bad books, and was shown a second yellow on 64 minutes with Malaga now 2-1 down at that point.
Spanish news outlet AS criticised Aznou for putting his side in this situation.
"To make matters worse, Málaga's afternoon became even more complicated when Aznou received his second yellow card for an unnecessary foul on Pablo Ramón," they wrote.
"Down to ten men and trailing, the task became almost impossible."
So, prior to being shown his marching orders, was Aznou playing well for Malaga, or did his performance deserve to see him taking an early bath?
Aznou is clearly close to putting it all together at Malaga
Going down to 10 at that stage in the game saw Aznou all but seal his team's fate.
That will see him understandably come in for significant criticism in the Spanish media and amongst supporters.
However, his underlying numbers from his display show just how agonisingly close he is to putting everything together.
Per FotMob, he completed 14 of 17 pass attempts, created one chance, completed one dribble and wasn't dispossessed once.
He also made five recoveries, won three tackles, six ground duels, won two fouls, made one block, one clearance and one interception.
So, it wasn't as if the Everton loanee was playing badly prior to being sent off, as he's clearly doing lots of things right.
The important thing now is that Aznou learns from this, and doesn't keep putting his team in sticky situations with some bad decision-making moving forward.