Villa lose to Monaco in the Champions League with Dave Woodhall hoping for better.
Anyone travelling back from Monaco by train should stop off and have a look round Hampton Court Maze; they’d feel right at home. Nowhere else could you see so many corners leading to so many dead ends, and that sums up what it’s like supporting the Villa lately. Just when you think we might have run into some form we turn up for one of the biggest matches of the season and put in one of the worst performances.
Three points in Monaco and we would be as good as in the top eight. Even a point would have seen us favourites for the next target, the places that would see us getting an easier draw in the play-offs. The result we got means we need to beat Celtic and hope.
Unai’s team selection was definitely adventurous, as well as showing the extent of our central midfield injury problems. It also meant that Emiliano Buendia and Leon Bailey were given opportunities to make an impression after being out for much of the season for differing reasons.
The one thing that we have seen plenty of is Villa letting in an early goal and we got one again, Emiliano Martinez performing wonders to keep out one chance but unable to stop the follow-up header. There was plenty of time left to salvage something from the game but Villa rarely looked capable of bringing anything back from Monaco other than some very expensive souvenirs.
There were a couple of chances before the break, both of them created by Buendia; Bailey’s shot was well-saved while Ollie Watkins should have done better with the opportunity he was given.
Villa were scarcely any better after the break and while the team had plenty of possession even the arrival of Jhon Duran with more than half an hour to go provided few more genuine chances. While the boss is usually the very definition of faultless, he can be criticised for waiting far too long in making further substitutions.
Morgan Rogers was disappointing as the game wore on and looked as though he could do with a rest, but was taken off with five minutes to go, by which time his only recent contribution had been a yellow card. The same could have been said about Buendia, who made way for Lamare Bogarde when Villa’s lack of central stability could have seen a change much earlier.
At the other end Monaco were threatening on the break and it needed some last-ditch defending to prevent a second goal. All in all it was a disappointing display that left Villa looking at the other results, which is something else we seem to do a lot of.
The group stages are stuttering to a close, in much the same way as last season’s league programme that got us here. Villa got off to such a good start in this competition that our drop-off has been doubly frustrating but with Celtic to come, a capacity Villa Park under the lights is a different matter entirely to Monaco in the late afternoon.
