Aston Villa boss has been wondering why his team lost control and eventually the game in the last Premier League outing.
Aston Villa fans’ hope of seeing their first win in the league after a stunning performance in Brugge did not materialise. Unai Emery’s men, in fact, slumped to a 2-1 defeat against Oliver Glasner’s Nottingham Forest. The Tricky Trees, who went to Villa Park with a winless record in their first four games, came out as winners due to Villa’s wasted performance, especially in the second half.
Emery himself was questioning it while commenting after the second home game, as reported on the official club website, avfc.co.uk.
“I don’t know why. They started by scoring quickly and we lost our shape, we lost our position like we were in the first half.”
Emery seemed satisfied with the performance in the first half, but he did not mention the poor finishing during the post-match interview.
“The first half, we played really fantastic, like we were planning and building the team. We stopped them, dominated, created chances and had corners offensively.”
Implicitly, the Spaniard might have seen it and how it must be improved quickly. They made seven shots during the game, five were on target and one was blocked. Yet, none of them came from the four attacking players in the line-up. There was no shot from Emi Buendia, Nicolas Jackson, John McGinn and George Hemmings. To make things even worse, Jackson’s replacement, Tammy Abraham, could not make a shot either in the second half.
The glimmer of hope came from Alysson Edward, who finally broke the deadlock and opened his account, and Ibrahim Mbaye. Perhaps it is high time Emery started playing them more often, as they offered the pace and aggression the team needed.
Emery’s disappointment was seen in his comments on their contrasting form in the second half, despite being able to find the equaliser.
“The second half was completely different. Even offensively we were not controlling the game like we did in the first half. They showed their power to play against us here, creating more chances than normal. Usually we are being compact and not conceding so many chances.
We made changes in the second half and we drew level. In that moment we were recovering our good balance, but the injury to Maatsen was penalising us. They created chances and scored the second goal.”
In a nutshell, it might display how the team has not completely gelled yet, especially with the new signings. Johan Manzambi just made his debut, and so did Mbaye. Alysson also just finally got his proper minutes on the pitch and eventually showed his capability.
Emery was probably planning to give more minutes to the new signings to accelerate the team’s integration. Unfortunately, it backfired as Forest’s more intense attack took control of the game, Ian Maatsen’s injury forced them to play with 10 players, plus Forest had the fortune of getting away from a VAR check.
Such a dilemmatic situation Villa had. Perhaps, the former Villarreal boss should have more contingency plans for playing with 10 players in case similar circumstances happen again. All they need is a quicker attacking build-up for counter-attacks, relying on long balls and pacey players. They have the players they need, with Suzuki to launch the attack at one end and Mbaye, Alysson and Hemmings at the other end to find space and utilise their pace to find the goal they need.
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