Ollie Watkins contests a header against Pierre Kalulu during Aston Villa’s goalless draw with Juventus at Villa Park.Photograph: Hannah McKay/Reuters
So. A football match definitely happened. This much at least we can be sure of. I have a lanyard, a programme and a set of cryogenically frozen fingers to verify that fact. Other people were here too, I think. I can sort of remember noises. Vague rasping noises. Disappointed noises. The noise you make when you’ve paid £97 to watch Federico Gatti make back-passes.
But already the actual memories of the event are beginning to evaporate, like a quick-drying paint, like the last thing you see before you go under general anaesthetic. Did Emiliano Martínez do something? Was Alessandro Del Piero on the pitch at some point? Hang on, it’s going blurry. Can no longer feel legs. Can no longer feel anything. Just floating. Orbs through space. Still floating. So nice here. So nice.
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Not a vintage night for Aston Villa, then, or for Juventus, or really for the competition as a whole. Forty-eight extra fixtures, one big floating table, no real structure or hard edges: games like this were always going to happen here and there. So few of the matches in this expanded group stage are genuinely must-win, especially for teams who have already chalked up a few points. The aim is purely to survive, to endure, to exist in this space for another couple of weeks until we know more.
The upshot was a kind of test-card 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 on confidence after six games without a win. Also by the fact that Villa were determined to play on the counter, and Juventus under Thiago Motta are defined by one characteristic above all: do not, under any circumstances, get countered.
So Gatti and Manuel Locatelli and Pierre Kalulu made neat little triangles in defence, daring Villa to press them, provoking them to commit. Meanwhile Villa simply refused to commit. There were 19 shots but only a handful of them carried any genuine menace. Ollie Watkins had one. Lucas Digne hit the crossbar with a free-kick, but not even an interesting part of the crossbar, just the top edge. Martínez made one superb save from Francisco Conceição at the back post. That, really, is all that needs to be said about this deeply forgettable game.
And so we move on to the interesting part. Where – exactly – are Villa heading right now? What is the trajectory? Seven games without a win: is this simply the kind of mid-season slump all non-elite teams go through at some point? Or is something more concerning going on here? Has this third-season Unai Emery team finally hit its ceiling?
First, the underlying data. Villa may only be eighth in the Premier League but on expected goals have the fourth-best attack and the sixth-best defence. They outshot Bournemouth at home, Tottenham away, Juventus here and Crystal Palace twice in league and cup, and won none of those games.
The chances are still coming. The fundamentals are still basically OK. In part Villa’s form stems as much from a few genuine anomalies – a missed penalty against Crystal Palace, Evanilson’s 96th-minute equaliser for Bournemouth, Tyrone Mings inexplicably picking up the ball against Brugge. Here, Morgan Rogers’s injury-time winner was ruled out for nothing, basically. This stuff is annoying. But it’s not in any way terminal.
So that’s the reassuring bit. But of course it is only one part of the story, and as Villa toiled here in entirely familiar ways, we got an insight into exactly why they are finding themselves on the wrong edge of these fine margins.
More than ever, this is a team built around the assassin qualities of Watkins: the back four always looking for the quick long ball to release him, the wingers instinctively attuned to his sharp near-post runs and tailoring their own movements accordingly. Then he comes off, Jhon Durán comes on, and though the chaos factor grows the plan is largely similar.
What’s changed? Last season Douglas Luiz, Moussa Diaby and Leon Bailey combined for 34 goals in all competitions. Only the slightly wayward Bailey remains. Rogers started brightly but has regressed a little in recent weeks. The result is an ever-sharper reliance on Watkins: 29% of their xG last season, 35% this season.
All of which means that Villa’s fate depends to an ever-increasing degree on what sort of day their No 11 has, and you sense opposition teams are beginning to work that out 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 improve him. But if Villa are going to snap themselves out of their slump, he’s going to need a little help.