Villa go out of the Carabao Cup to Crystal Palace. Dave Woodhall watches.
I was tempted not to bother with a match report tonight. After all, if they couldn’t be bothered neither could I. Or I could have written a few hundred words about how nobody cares about the League Cup and what a shame it is that a competition that gave us so much enjoyment is slipping into oblivion. I could even have written a fair bit about paying what was still a good few quid (even if it was peanuts in Premier League terms) to see a half-arsed performance from players who should have been busting a gut to prove themselves.
Ten changes from the weekend, and probably another eight or nine from the side that’ll start next weekend. Villa managers have been hung in effigy for such selections although previous bosses making so many changes would have been scraping the barrel of the youth team. Such is the quality at Villa Park these days that the second string was full of internationals, plus the surprise and welcome returns of Boubacar Kamara and Tyrone Mings. Palace, in contrast, put out a more or less full-strenth side, and it showed.
The visitors started well and had looked dangerous before their eightb minute goal That seemed to wake Villa up a but and midway through the first half Leon Bailey laid on a chance for Jhon Duran, who beat the challenge of what looked like Jaden Philogene to level the scores. Villa looked a bit livlier after that but didn’t really show much else. They looked like a team who’d never played together. which they hadn’t.
They weren’t much better in the second half, and the disaster waiing to happen that is Diego Carlos belied his recent good form with a bit of poor play that gave Palace what proved to be the winner. Including stoppages there was half an hour left to rescue the game but Villa never looked capable, or indeed particularly bothered about it.
And so Villa slip out of another domestic cup competition without much struggle. There was no booing that I could hear at the end, more a resigned shrug of indifference. I won’t say that Unai Emery wasn’t interested; he’s a professional and therefore presumably wants to win every game but perhaps he wants to win some more than others. Giving almost all the first team the night off and filling the bench with unknowns, then waiting until ten minutes or so to bring any of them on, is maybe more telling than anything he could say about the match.
With that out of the way, there were at least a couple of positives to take from a thoroughly underwhelming evening. Ian Masatsen looked impresssive, Jhon Duran scored again and best of all, both Mings and Kamara put in some top-quality challenges and left the pitch unscathed. That apart, there wasn’t much to cheer about, particularly for the larger than usual amount of kids who were there, lured by half-term and cheap(er) tickets. Then again, at least they’ve soon learned what supporting the Villa is really all about.