The Good, Bad and Ugly of Everton and Brentford
What a difference a year makes. This time last year, Villa had just dispatched Young Boys in their debut Champions League game. Now the clouds are circling Unai Emery and the squad.
The Good
There will be plenty of negative considerations to follow, but let’s begin with a couple of positives.
Villa have a top-eight squad, an elite manager, and are in no threat of bankruptcy.
Whatever is affecting the balance of the club on the pitch currently should only be a temporary blip as, despite what many will have you believe, there have only been four league games and a League Cup tie.
The season is young, and there is plenty of time to sort things out; the start of this season ’tis but a scratch compared to the deep trauma many older Villa fans still feel.
It’s time for the TikTok generation to experience some hard yards.
Villan of the Week – Lamare Bogarde
Bogarde has stepped up out of necessity against Everton and Brentford. There’s an argument to be made that he was the best outfield player in both games, with a combined passing accuracy of 92.3 across all his minutes this season; his utility player status is becoming vital to the Villa squad.
If he continues to impress, you will see why the club weren’t fussed about keeping Enzo Barrenechea around.
The Bad
The gloves are off as far as Villa’s performances after the Brentford League Cup exit. If Everton was an unambitious but hard-earned point, Brentford was a return to sleepwalking masquerading as football.
It was dire by the standards Unai Emery has set himself since being appointed. Enough analysts and bedroom tacticians are trying to figure out what’s gone wrong without going into it in detail here.
The eye test from all the games shows that Villa aren’t getting the ball into dangerous areas with any intent or pace.
It’s fine to strive for a greater degree of control and defensive security, but not at the expense of completely handicapping any forward play.
The stats don’t lie. In four games last season, Villa had created 16 big chances, while this season they have only created four.
An average one big chance per game is not enough to achieve any success in the Premier League or, indeed, any league or cup competition in the world.
The Everton game was a decent result all things considered, but the Brentford loss on penalties was awful as Villa had the game under control.
A first-team goal of the season from Harvey Elliott, control of possession, and the chance to make it two when Sancho hit the post should have been enough to see out the match.
By letting it slip and ultimately losing on penalties, the low-priority League Cup did more damage to the confidence of the team than it was likely worth.
This may have been a changed team from the Everton game, but the players on the pitch at the beginning were more than enough to put up a better show, especially as many of them were Emery signings.
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The Ugly
While the jury is out on the recent signings, you have to ask what exactly is going on with Villa’s recruitment.
The squad from Unai Emery’s first game, the tone-setting win against Manchester United, featured nine players who have seen minutes in the last two games and the exact same back four and goalkeeper that started Emery’s reign.
PSR and UEFA Squad Cost Ratio have been used as crutches for a poor start to the season for too long.
Wasting over £100 million on Malen, Onana, and Maatsen last season when they aren’t even guaranteed starters is criminal. It’s no wonder teams have worked out Aston Villa when they have had nearly three years to watch the same players play the same system.
While Emery has done a phenomenal job in his tenure at Villa, his recruitment team, which he is reportedly the head of, has failed miserably.
Only Rogers, Torres and Tielemans are genuine starters, and they were well known and, in the case of Rogers, scouted with the eye.
The rest are like throwing mud at the wall to see what sticks; there’s no overarching plan, no succession structure, and Villa now seem to survive window to window, dodging fines and coming to settlements.
It’s not the way to run a football club that had a platform to smash the existing cartel at the beginning of the previous season.
The red flags were glazed over by many: trading Douglas Luiz for two squad fillers, trying to replace Diaby with Philogene, and buying Maatsen and Malen without a clear plan on what to do with them— are all things previous Villa regimes would have been roasted for.
While things are ugly at the moment, there is the ability in the squad and tactical nous in Unai Emery to turn things around quickly.
However, the looming shadow of underperforming in the games ahead means Villa may not have bottomed out yet.
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