Aston Villa are Looking for a Vital Jump Start in Lille
They say a week can be a long time in football and Aston Villa supporters have just entered one such week. Currently there are two clear routes for Villa into next season’s Champions League, but after their team’s slump in form in the past month, fans are increasingly anxious that both may close sooner than expected.
The league path is still open. Villa sit fourth in a four-team race for three Champions League places. The mathematics, at least, remain in their favour. Opta’s supercomputer currently gives Villa an 80% chance of finishing in the top four. Yet, any battle-hardened Villa supporter will consider it decidedly less than that.
Which is why Thursday night in Lille matters. It’s more than an insurance policy, it’s a chance to seriously change the outlook.
Emery’s relationship with the Europa League is well documented. He has won it four times. Villa have won five consecutive matches in this season’s competition — the longest winning run the club has ever produced in major European football. The last English club to win six in a row in the Europa League was Arsenal, in the autumn of 2020. It is not a consolation prize in his vocabulary but a tournament he understands structurally and tactically in ways that most managers simply don’t.
The draw, on their side at least, offers no easy passage. Roma, Porto, Stuttgart and a Nottingham Forest side nobody is taking seriously enough all lurk, but the route to Istanbul is navigable for a Villa team who beat five current Champions League teams in the league earlier in the season.
The problem is that level hasn’t been visible for several weeks.
Europa Jump Start
Cast your mind back to the start of the season. It took Villa five league games to score and at that point they remained winless and found themselves in the bottom three of the Premier League. Then came Bologna at Villa Park in the Europa League, a scruffy hard-fought win against a team Villa had no business beating on the evidence of the previous weeks. It didn’t change the squad. It didn’t change the tactics. It changed the atmosphere at Villa Park and the belief at Bodymoor Heath.
A few days later, Villa had their first league win of the season with a 3-1 victory over Fulham. Part of a five-game winning run, that was soon bettered with eleven straight wins from early November onwards.
The Bologna game wasn’t a result. It was a jump start.
The Lille Test
Lille away, managed carefully and seen out with the professionalism this squad is capable of, could be the same thing. The history adds a layer of difficulty. Six European trips to France, no wins, two draws, four defeats – with the last three all losses. And Villa’s Europa Conference League clash two seasons ago was the stuff of nightmares until Matty Cash’s late equaliser dragged the game into extra time, then penalties.
While a win on Thursday night would break that sequence, a draw would also set up the second leg at Villa Park nicely.
Listen to the MOMS Podcast Preview of Lille
Lille are not the side Villa struggled with in that Conference League quarter-final. They’ve lost their goalkeeper Lucas Chevalier, Jonathan David and Leny Yoro. They sit sixth in Ligue 1, their home form is unconvincing, and their Europa League attendances this season suggest even their own supporters aren’t fully convinced.
Of their last seven major European knockout ties, they’ve won the first leg only once (drawing two and losing four) and were beaten at home by Crvena Zvezda (Red Star) in the play-off round last month.
It’s hoped that the return from injury of John McGinn, who has travelled to France, will be a catalyst for the team to pick up from where they left off in the league stage of the tournament. After all, wins away to Feyenoord and Fenerbahçe in particular, should prove useful dress rehearsals for Villa’s task ahead in Lille.
This time next week, the daffodils will be fully out, which, according to ex-Villa boss Steve Bruce, marks the business end of the season. A good result in France, backed up by a positive one at the cursed Old Trafford, will certainly add some much-needed optimism to the outlook for the rest of the season.
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