by SO. A football match definitely took place. That’s at least what we can be sure of. I have a lanyard, a program and a pair of cryogenically frozen fingers to verify this fact. Other people were there too, I think. I kind of remember the noises. Vague hoarse noises. Disappointed noises. The noise you make when you pay £97 to see Federico Gatti do back passes.
But already the real memories of the event are beginning to evaporate, like a paint that dries quickly, like the last thing you see before going under general anesthesia. Did Emiliano Martínez do something? Was Alessandro Del Piero on the pitch at any point? Wait, it’s getting blurry. I can’t feel my legs anymore. I can’t feel anything anymore. Just floating. Orbs through space. Still floating. So nice here. So nice.
Related: Martínez holds off Juventus before Rogers denies Aston Villa winner
So it’s not a vintage night for Aston Villa, nor for Juventus, nor really for the competition as a whole. Forty-eight extra encounters, a big floating table, no real structure or hard edges: games like this were always going to happen here and there. Few of the matches in this expanded group stage are truly unmissable, especially for teams who have already scored a few points. The goal is simply to survive, to last, to exist in this space for a few more weeks until we know more.
The result was a kind of test football, the sporting equivalent of hold music: an effect exacerbated by the fact that the visitors had the best defensive record in the Big Five leagues this season and the home side were desperately short of confidence after six games. matches without a win. Also by the fact that Villa was determined to play on the counter, and Thiago Motta’s Juventus is defined above all by one characteristic: not to be countered under any circumstances.
So Gatti, Manuel Locatelli and Pierre Kalulu formed nice little triangles in defense, daring Villa to press them, enticing them to engage. Meanwhile, Villa simply refused to commit. There were 19 shots fired, but only a handful of them involved a real threat. Ollie Watkins had one. Lucas Digne hit the crossbar from a free kick, but not even an interesting part of the crossbar, just the top edge. Martínez made a superb save from Francisco Conceição at the far post. That’s really all there is to say about this deeply forgettable game.
And so we move on to the interesting part. Where – exactly – is Villa heading right now? What is the trajectory? Seven games without a win: Is this just the kind of mid-season slump that all non-elite teams go through at some point? Or is there something more worrying going on here? Has this third-season Unai Emery team finally reached its ceiling?
First, the underlying data. Villa may only be eighth in the Premier League, but in terms of expected goals they have the fourth best attack and sixth best defense. They dominated Bournemouth at home, Tottenham away, Juventus here and Crystal Palace twice in the league and cup, and failed to win any of those games.
The chances still present themselves. The fundamentals remain generally correct. Villa’s form stems in part from some real anomalies – a missed penalty against Crystal Palace, Evanilson’s 96th-minute equalizer for Bournemouth, Tyrone Mings inexplicably winning the ball back against Brugge. Here, Morgan Rogers’ injury-time winner was sent off for nothing, basically. This stuff is boring. But it is by no means terminal.
So that’s what’s reassuring. But of course, that’s only part of the story, and as Villa worked here in an entirely familiar manner, we understood exactly why they find themselves on the wrong edge of these fine margins.
More than ever, this is a team built around Watkins’ assassin qualities: the four defenders are always looking for a long, fast ball to free him, the wingers have instinctively adapted to his sudden runs at the near post and adapted their own movements accordingly. Then he comes out, Jhon Durán comes in, and although the chaos factor increases, the plan is largely similar.
What has changed? Last season, Douglas Luiz, Moussa Diaby and Leon Bailey together scored 34 goals in all competitions. Only Bailey remains, slightly temperamental. Rogers started well but has slipped a bit in recent weeks. The result is an ever-increasing reliance on Watkins: 29% of their xG last season, 35% this season.
All of this means that Villa’s fate depends more and more on what kind of day their number 11 has, and you sense that opposition teams are starting to understand that too. And of course, Watkins is a brilliant striker, capable of bending and breaking teams in multiple ways, playing under a coach who will only make him better. But if Villa are to get out of their bad patch, they’ll need a little help.
