Villa are giving away familiar goals in cheap fashion. It could cost them a Champions League spot
Unai Emery stood in the same spot as he did back in May last year, carrying comparable despair.
Matheus Cunha had put Manchester United back in front with Aston Villa, once again, the masters of their own downfall.
Another cheap turnover was punished, another potentially simmering attack burst with one stray pass, ending with United cutting through again.
Emery stationed himself in the corner of his technical area. Unlike in May where his fixed, thousand-yard stare at the final whistle foreshadowed the level of pain Villa would endure in the summer without Champions League football on the horizon, he was frantic. The Spaniard clenched his fists as he flapped his hands, reading Leon Bailey the riot act for trying to make, in what in his view was a risky pass, to Morgan Rogers.
United broke and through Bruno Fernandes, perhaps the most adept player to deliver the pass to Cunha, split Villa’s backline in two.
As the hosts celebrated, Emery continued his admonishment. He was now hunched over, shouting in Bailey’s direction, who dared not turn around.
Bailey, instead, made a beeline for Ezri Konsa, who had his own share of culpability with Cunha running off the defender. The pair argued and, like their manager, pointed and waved their arms furiously.
“It is difficult because it was an exciting moment,” Emery said after. “But when we got in that transition, they had more defenders than we had attackers.
“So in this action, Bailey was alone with Luke Shaw, and there were two players with Rogers. I was trying to get Bailey to stop and get passes to get positioning in attack.”
However unsavoury and spiralling, these are scenes that Villa are used to.
Old Trafford is the place where Villa have contrived ways to self-implode or to reek in self-pity. Sunday’s 3-1 defeat stretched a wretched record of two wins in their previous 38 league visits to the ground. This was where many ghosts live and the disaster zone that requires supporters to prepare mentally for every worst-case scenario, just so the pain, which inevitably is felt due to the constant omnishambles, does not cut as deep.
If Villa’s overarching feeling back in May came from deep-rooted anger and injustice after referee Thomas Bramall pre-emptively blew his whistle before Rogers scored a perfectly good goal, this was one of major frustration.
This defeat left Villa with just three victories in their previous 12 league matches. The deficiencies unearthed in that time were aggravated at Old Trafford — as they always seem to be.
Emery’s pre-match analysis aims to be 70 per cent weighted towards his own side and 30 per cent focused on Villa’s next opponent. Before every meeting with United, Emery identifies their specific threats on transition and why closing space in midfield and limiting turnovers is essential to negating them.
Here, Emery deployed a compact 4-4-2 without the ball, aiming to force United out-wide. His starting XI was Villa’s oldest in a Premier League fixture since February 2012, with experience the watchword. Emery wanted Villa to be savvy; to be clean and clinical, taking no unnecessary risks while exploiting United’s own midfield struggles.
In the first half, Villa had reduced United’s threat centrally and though wide areas seemed an area of concern, the defensive shape restricted play through the middle.
In possession, Villa had a base to build from, with the midfield balance — three No 10s in John McGinn, Emiliano Buendia and Rogers rotating and overloading Kobbie Mainoo and Casemiro — weighted in their favour. Every time United’s midfield duo would jump to press Villa’s own pairing, as noted by Villa’s analysts, there was space to play through them and into the attacking creators.
Truthfully, however, hopes of Emery’s approach paying off rested heavily on a powder-puff attack, which conjure up promising positions but did not possess an attacking threat or end product. Ollie Watkins’ toils are deeply concerning and here at Old Trafford, there was always scepticism that he would make the most of being one-on-one with Leny Yoro — a defender he had enjoyed battling when the 20-year-old was at Lille.
This was what made Villa’s two cheap giveaways for United’s first two goals so damning. In their current state, Villa can only win matches if they are defensively sound and somehow manage to nick an odd goal.
Bailey’s loose pass for Cunha’s goal followed a similar pattern to what had happened for United’s first.
Villa had regained possession in midfield but within three passes, United broke beyond their backline.
Lucas Digne’s decision to blindly turn the ball away, when he had time to either control or clear upfield, resulted in the avoidable corner that Casemiro scored from.
Ross Barkley points to where he felt the ball should have gone:
Bailey bore the brunt of Emery’s ire, yet, deep down, the Spaniard’s mood would have been worsened by Villa conceding in the same fashion. Having found a lifeline through Barkley’s equaliser, they let another “opportunity”, as Emery described it afterwards, slip through their fingers.
Cunha’s goal was the contest’s decisive moment. Barkley’s effort had ignited confidence and energy into Villa, as if they had realised they had done the hard work in actually finding a way to score. They were on top.
The growing optimism was then shattered through one giveaway and Konsa losing Cunha. Momentum dramatically swung again. For a manager who prides himself on control and poise in his team, conceding two goals on transition will sting Emery.
When play was in front of Villa and they could operate from the defensive shape their manager had organised, players were comfortable. When they lost possession through errors of their own making, the shape became dishevelled and vulnerable.
“We planned before that their transitions are really fantastic,” Emery explained at his post-match press conference. “We are usually a team who want to control the game with positioning and stop the transition against Manchester United. We were excited after equalising, but we lost this momentum after they scored their second goal.”
The counter-punch was too much for Villa to recover from. They could only stumble, with the hauntings of Old Trafford flooding back. Benjamin Sesko’s deflected strike gave United a third, while Villa, at the other end, somehow blundered a three-versus-one in the attacking six-yard box.
Villa’s analysts banged the table. Emery stood in that familiar spot. Villa’s difference-maker has always been the manager and he will ultimately be what secures them a Champions League spot if they do achieve as much, yet avoidable failings are causing ever-increasing damage.
