Dave Woodhall tries to find comfort in Villa’s defeat to Brugge.
There’s not really much you can say about Wednesday night. And whatever you can say will be overhadowed by the Tyrone Mings incident. Mings is a true Villa hero, a legend even. He joined us at one of our lowest-ever ebbs and has been an essential part of a spectacular journey. On the way he’s been vilified, criticised and abused, then finally suffed the cruel blow of suffering an injury that meant he missed the whole of last season.
Tyrone’s come back and on Wednesday night made his long-awaited debut in the Champions League. Unfortunately he chose that moment, with the eyes of the world on him, to make the biggest mistake any footballer could ever make. For the rest of his career and beyond he’ll be reminded of this night, usually by people who, never mind footballing ability, in terms of dignity and basic human decency are worth less combined than he is on his own. Like the injury that prevented him from taking part in Villa’s successful attempt to reach this stage, he’ll come back the stronger for it.
If there was one good thing to come out of the incident, it overshadowed the latest in a line of poor Vila performances, where we were outplayed and outfought by a team who are nowhere near the same quality as either our heroes or some of the opposition they’ve beaten so far in this competition. Unai Emery made the usual rotation changes and the return of Mings and Boubacar Kamara promised greater defensive stabilty, but it was to no avail.
Brugge, who were decent but hardly world-beating, had the most of the first half chances, with Emiliano Martinez again having to be at his best to keep the score goalless at half-time. The home side had already missed another couple before the goal, and although Emery changed the team round and brought on a plethora of subs from the talent at his disposal on the bench, Villa failed to make any impression and the win that would have virtually ensured qualificaton for the knockout stages went begging.
So where do we go from here? Anfield is the obvious reply, and that’s not a particularly appealing prospect for a team on the crest of a slump. There’s a reason for the current drop off in form; there must be. One theory I heard during the evening’s post-mortem is that the squad strength we’ve been talking about might have proved Villa’s undoing since the host of injuries have cleared up. Last season the team was virtually unchanged week after week, more out of neccessity than anything, and the boss seemed to have a Saunders-like belief in picking his best players every match and arranging the tactics to suit them. This season, with its embarassment of riches, has seen that continuity gone, and with it perhaps the siege mentality that drive the team on to success.
It’s been a bad week, and it promises to get worse before it gets better. But just to balance out any downheartedness, this was the second anniversary of Unai’s first game in charge. That day was the harbinger of great things to come, but even so I doubt anyone would have thought two years on we’d be saying that we could do with beating Juventus to qualify for the knockout stage of the Champions League. Form’s temporary. Class is permanent.
