Analysis: Aston Villa stuck in neutral as chaotic draw continues winless run
This time last year it felt like the only certainties in life were death, taxes and Villa winning at home.
Now only the first two can be depended on with Saturday’s 2-2 draw with Crystal Palace the latest frustrating afternoon for Unai Emery’s team in front of their own support.
Villa’s third successive home Premier League draw also extended their winless run in all competitions to six matches and was arguably the most concerning result of both runs.
While defeats at Tottenham and Liverpool could be mitigated in part by the quality of the opposition, the rule could not apply to a Palace team sat in the relegation zone who arrived with just a solitary league win to their name this season and seriously depleted by injury.
Villa, admittedly, were also missing some key names yet they also, supposedly, boast the superior squad built to challenge both domestically and in Europe. Emery, their workaholic manager, had also spent the international break in overdrive, eagerly trying to work out just why a team who just a month ago could seemingly do no wrong had suddenly lost momentum.
Instead of finding answers, the Villa boss only has more questions with Saturday delivering confirmation his is a unit currently stuck in neutral.
These were the kind of contests, against teams in the middle and bottom half of the table, Villa used to be so good at winning during the club record 15-match winning streak which began with a turgid 1-0 win over Palace in March last year. Yet since setting a new benchmark by beating Arsenal last December, Villa have won just six of their next 17 home Premier League matches. That is not the kind of record a team with aspirations of again challenging for a top-four finish can afford to continue.
Neither can they continue to concede goals - and more importantly chances - with such worrying ease. Two passes was all it took for Palace to switch play from deep in their own half to Ismaila Sarr bearing down on goal.
After all Emery’s planning and all those team meetings, the Senegal international’s fourth minute strike immediately put Villa on the back foot and while they later showed character to fight back not once but twice to at least take a point, they were never in full control.
True, Dean Henderson’s save from Youri Tielemans’ penalty, after Ollie Watkins had cancelled out Sarr’s opener, was the afternoon’s crucial turning point. But the two minutes which followed summed up the general chaos. Just a fortnight after conceding and giving up other big chances straight from their own corners in the 2-0 defeat at Liverpool, Villa did so again, Justin Devenny sweeping home after Sarr had again been sent racing into the home half.
Emery later revealed his team had worked to solve their issues on transition during the international break. On Saturday’s evidence, it will be back to the drawing board. The consolation was Villa did actually manage to score from one of their own corners, Ross Barkley glancing home a fine header from Tielemans’ 77th minute delivery. At that moment you suspected Villa might go on to win it but instead it was Palace who came closest, Emi Martinez pulling off a stunning save to deny Jeffrey Schlupp after the kind of hesitant defending from Diego Carlos which neatly summed up the uncertainty of the home side as a whole.
Emery’s post-match message, essentially, was an appeal for calm and with the table so congested there is certainly no reason, yet, to press the panic button. The fact Villa’s next visitors are Juventus is a reminder of where this current run sits in the bigger picture.
Yet it was also difficult to agree with the manager’s assertion his team might simply have been unlucky, or that they actually deserved to win the match. It feels less a case of Villa being disproportionately punished for their mistakes - as Emery later suggested - and more one of them simply making too many mistakes to start with.
They have been too easy to score against all season. Even the two home league wins, against Everton and Wolves, had to be salvaged from losing positions.
Except now Jhon Duran, the super sub whose every shot seemed to be whistling into the top corner during the early weeks of the campaign, has come back down to earth and is now two months without a Premier League goal. Watkins at least netted for the first time in a month having earlier been denied by an excellent Henderson save. There were a couple of moments in the second half, however, when the England international paid the price for being indecisive. With Leon Bailey still to open his account for the season and Morgan Rogers not quite hitting the same heights as the early weeks of the campaign, Villa’s attack as a whole is not quite firing.
The defence remains comfortably the biggest concern. Admittedly, Villa were without Amadou Onana, the record £50million signing recruited in part to help Emery’s team regain some of the control lost when Boubacar Kamara suffered injury last season. Kamara’s return from knee surgery has been hit by a niggle which kept him out on Saturday, while Ezri Konsa’s composure, leadership and pace was missing from the backline.
But the uncomfortable truth is Villa have conceded goals regardless of which personnel has been on the pitch. It is now just one clean sheet in 12 league matches and until that statistic improves, it will be difficult for them to find the kind of consistency required to achieve their lofty ambitions.
