Dave Woodhall watches Villa lose at home to Everton.
I suppose I should be used to it by now. The greatest rule of football is that whenever opportunity arises, when the other results go for us or the fates combine to make success likely, the Villa manage to cock up their chances in the most spectacular way possible.
All weekend we’d watched as the teams above and below us failed to win games that seemed straightforward. Even earlier on Sunday Wolves managed to get a point from Newcastle. And so the stage was set for Villa to put even more distance between us and the rest while putting pressure on Arsenal. 
We were at home to Everton, the one team we can always rely on to give us a result when it matters. It was all too good to be true.
The line-up is starting to be stretched and Donyell Malen’s midweek departure meant that there was no recognisable attacking option on the bench. Jadon Sancho was missing presumed ill, Harvey Elliott was just missing and Alysson has succumbed to another great rule that says any new Villa signing has to get injured in the first week’s training. But this should have been a minor distraction on an afternoon when Villa’s title credentials were going to be reinforced.
Eleven seconds after kick-off Everton hit the post and the scene really was set. They also had a goal disallowed for offside then even worse, with eighteen minutes gone John McGinn went off injured. It looked a bad one and (another great rule of football) it’s bound to be worse. The loss of Villa’s talismanic figure naturally caused problems but the team started to look a bit more settled and at half-time talk centred on how the win would be ground out rather than a matter of routine.
Then after an hour a mistake in defence was made worse by Emiliano Martinez and Villa were a goal down. The team did rally for a while after that and Evann Guessand hit the woodwork but thry never really looked like equalising. On another day Morgan Rogers might have got a couple and Ollie Watkins can’t be as anonymous again as he was all afternoon, but that was it. It was a flat performance on a flat day with weather to match. The team looked tired, too many were anonymous and with another European night to come in midweek, Unai has got a job on to get them inspired again.
If you want to look on the bright side the result was frustrating rather than disastrous. We could have really put down a marker but we can at least say that another round of fixtures have passed and we’re no worse off. George Hemming looks as though he has a great future ahead while Lamare Bogarde continues to seem at home in the Premier League. Most of all, this performance showed that while the players Villa have got might be good enough, there simply aren’t enough of them. Whatever the rules might say, we have to have some new arrivals before the end of the month.
