A late equaliaer costs Villa victory over Bournemouth, as Dave Woodhall writes.
Banana skins arrive in all shapes and sizes. With the natural fatalism that comes with decades of under-achievement, something was eventually bound to go wrong, and probably after another good European win. Drawing with a solid mid-table side isn’t necessarily a major setback, but conceding a last-kick equaliser against any opposition is something that a team with pretensions of a top four place shouldn’t be doing.
After beating Bologna midweek, Unai Emery made a few changes which showed the strength in depth now at his disposal. He should make the most of it, because it probably won’t last.
Villa began the game as though it would be a routine win and perhaps that was the problem. Ezri Konsa and Pao Torres both had good chances and Morgan Rogers could have done better with another opportunity as Bournemouth barely saw the ball. Villa, in contrast, looked confident and assured that the goal would come eventually.
It should have done midway through the first half, when John McGinn got the ball into the net only for his attempt to be ruled out after yet another interminable VAR check. The ball was judged to have gone out of play before Ollie Watkins cut it back for McGinn and that was the closest Villa got to taking the lead before the break.
Three players had already been booked despite the team hardly having committed a foul between them and one such victim, Amadou Onana, was replaced in favour of Ross Barkley for the second half. The usual litany of substitutions came about as Emery attempted to give the team another boost. Jhon Duran had already come on then with twenty mimutes to go, Leon Bailey replaced McGinn. Five minutes after that he laid on the overdue goal for Barkley and that should have been enough against opposition who were the definition of game but limited.
And again, that could gave been the problem. Once they’d taken the lead Villa behaved as though the game waa alrewdy won, The careful, controlled play that had been in abundance before the goal went, with mistakes creeping in and too many loose balls. Then again, the flow of the game wasn’t helped by a referee who issued thirteen yellow cards, seven of them to Villa players.
Despite not being at their best, Villa seemed to be on the way to another win when a final free-kick, albeit one that was deserved, was hoisted into the box and the sort of unprofessional set-piece marking that should have been eradicated by now, led to an equaliser and two dropped points.
It was an annoying end to an otherwise successful week, and Unai was right when he said that the result was “painful”. Villa missed the chance to open up a gap between them and the fifth-placed club, which has been the story of the league season so far. In the end it wasn’t so much a banana skin but it was certainly a slippy patch of the sort we’ve got to cut out if we’re going to make a sucess of the two game a week schedule that the top teams manage.
