Villa draw with Crystal Palace and Dave Woodhall’s spirits are dampened.
It rained at Villa Park on Saturday. You could say the weather matched the performance or Villa’s recent form, and you’d probably be right. It could have been worse but it could have been a lot better.
For once the international break had come at the right time, after those four straight defeats that left emulating last season’s achievements looking even more difficult. Let the players who’ve been picked for their countries do well and boost their confidence, give Unai the chance to work with the ones remaining at Bodymoor and let the injuries have time to clear up. That was the idea. Of course, it didn’t work like that. It never does.
A few of the players, most notably Morgan Rogers, were lifted but that was outweighed by the casualty list growing and so we kicked off on Saturday with Lamont Bogarde at right-back and a central midfield pairing of Ross Barkley and Youri Tielemans. Both bring elements of quality to the team but ‘presence’ isn’t one of them. Still, we were only playing Crystal Palace, in the bottom three and with their own injury problems, so what we had should have been more than enough.
Four minutes into the game we were a goal down. hat wasn’t in the script at all. But Villa got into the game and half an hour later John McGinn’s ball to Ollie Watkins led to the striker’s first goal in six games and Villa were looking good to kick on.
They were looking even better on the stroke of half-tine when Leon Bailey was brought down in the box for a blatant penalty. Unfortunately Tielemans’ spot-kick was well saved. No point being too harsh on the errant Belgian; these things happen. What shouldn’t happen, though, is that within 57 seconds Villa were a goal down again. Amateurish, slapdash, call it what you like, it shouldn’t have happened.
To their credit the team came out for the second half looking more composed, particularly on the right side of defence where Matty Cash had replaced Bogarde. Bailey hit the woodwork and Villa began to create more chances, helped by the inevitable introduction of Jhon Duran. The equaliser came after 77 minutes when Barkley headed home a corner and although there were chances at both ends after that, it was Palace who came closest to getting the winner.
At least the losing streak is over but this was another two points dropped through carelessness. We score the penalty, Palace almost certainly don’t get their goal and if the second half plays out as it did Villa win 3-1 and everyone’s happy. To keep going down that road, if we’d held out for a few more seconds against Bournemouth and Tyrone Mings hadn’t had his rush of blood in Brugge, we’d have been third in one table and fifth (I think) in the other.
Instead of that we’re eight in both and looking at our next games in the two competitions to bounce back. Now, who are we playing again?