Aston Villa were defeated 2-0 by Wolverhampton Wanderers on Friday evening, which many supporters saw as an avoidable embarrassment.
Villa does not win at Molineux. In that sense, the result was no surprise, even against a Wolves team well down the Premier League table. Wolves are a slightly different proposition under Rob Edwards, but this result was about Villa.
It was a gloomy evening in every respect and manager Unai Emery must bear that. He’s responsible for Villa starting the weekend in third place, so there won’t be any over-the-top reaction here, but Friday’s tame capitulation was wrong in every way from start to finish.
Villa’s shortcomings were costly, but not total
Questions have long existed about Villa’s playing style. The pace has been clear, deliberate and damaging, and the theoretical success so far doesn’t mean that isn’t true.
The more direct examination also includes Emery’s team selection and substitutions, both of which fell short against Wolves.
Villa are clearly suffering without Boubacar Kamara, Youri Tielemans and John McGinn, but there were players on the pitch who shouldn’t have been there when Wolves scored their first goal and others who weren’t there but should have been.
By taking the bones out of the tactical plan and scrutinizing Emery’s personnel decisions, we don’t want to blame his players for a completely unacceptable performance, but choosing Ollie Watkins over Tammy Abraham and Lucas Digne over Ian Maatsen was a mistake.
One of Emery’s three changes for the game against Wolves was more effective. Jadon Sancho came into the team on the right side of the attack and was, in my view, Villa’s most dangerous attacking threat.
A promising partnership on the right wing
Yet Sancho was substituted after an hour and replaced by Leon Bailey. The fact that Villa immediately conceded the first goal was not a direct consequence of that change, but it did emphasize the difference between the pre- and post-match.
If there is any positive to be found in this mess, any hope buried deep in a growing morass of pedestrian football, Sancho is one of the components of it. The other is Matty Cash.
Neither Sancho nor Cash played out of their skin at Wolves and both have even had better games recently, but the way they handled each other was pretty much the only reason for optimism in an otherwise gruesome performance.
Having failed to capitalize on their early chances, Villa’s most likely route to goal was through the left-hand play of their right-sided duo. They managed to get into attacking and crossing positions behind the Wolves defence, an area where Villa are often allowed to get into but where they don’t really seem to have a plan once they get there.
When Villa signed Sancho and Harvey Elliott on transfer deadline day, I expected Sancho to eventually be paired with former Borussia Dortmund teammate Maatsen on the left – a partnership that also looked good in flashes – with Elliott settling on the other side of Morgan Rogers.
Sancho and Cash offer a solution
It’s safe to say it didn’t work out that way for either of them.
Emery was clearly unhappy with his possession on Friday night, but Sancho’s work without the ball has earned the manager’s confidence and his growing influence on the right matched the timing of Emi Buendía’s resurgence on the left.
Cash is still having by far his best season in a Villa shirt. He is more confident than ever and defensively more robust and stable. He is one of Villa’s most consistent players. By quickly forging a partnership with Sancho, Cash has helped create a potentially fruitful option in a barren spell for Villa.
I wouldn’t have split them up when they were already working well after an hour, but then I wouldn’t have taken Douglas Luiz away at the same time.
But Molineux is a thing of the past. No one of Villa persuasion came out well and no one deserved it. Mistakes were made and shortcomings on and off the pitch were evident, but if Emery wants to push Villa further from this point, he could do worse than leaning on two of his most in-form players as a primary mode of attack.
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