Aston Villa boss Unai Emery has conceded that his side must do better, and is targeting our midweek game vs Brentford as a key encounter to get back on track.
Villa’s winless streak stretched to eight games across all competitions after we were beaten 3-0 by Chelsea on Sunday, and aside from the disappointing result, it was another woeful performance that raised concern.
READ MORE: Villa player ratings vs Chelsea: Woeful display ends in heavy defeat
While we continue to leak goals too easily and are far too easy to play against and through, we lacked a clinical end product to our play which is hurting us, while the confidence and belief levels look low as every player is struggling to play to their potential.
Emery though was keen to avoid panicking and remained calm in his assessment, as while he acknowledged that his Villa side need to improve, he also put a lot of emphasis on our clash with Brentford on Wednesday night as an opportunity for us to get back on track and finally rediscover some winning form.
“The analysis is not only for this match,” he said in his post-match comments, as per BBC Sport. “We arrived here two years ago and progressively we were always getting better. This match is a good test for us to see where we are with teams like Chelsea, Liverpool a few weeks ago. At the beginning of the season we can sense some teams were better than us and one of them is Chelsea. Try to keep balance, not be frustrated. We are going to try again to recover our confidence on Wednesday against Brentford.
“We believe completely in our work. We are enjoying the Champions League and in the league we are more or less under where we were. Our challenge is to fight on Wednesday with Brentford and see how our level is with Brentford. There are still matches to play and we are going to recover our confidence, trying to build the team. We have to try to be better than we are being now. We can individually do better.
“Today Chelsea were better than us. They played like they are now feeling confident with the players they have. We had our moments but we didn’t score. We are a little bit under our results but we will keep going against Brentford [on Wednesday].
“The important thing is this match. We move forward to Brentford.”
The Villa boss is undoubtedly correct in his analysis above, and naturally the only thing we can do now is focus on the next game and try to get back to winning ways.
However, there is an enormous improvement needed on what we’ve seen recently, as Villa look poor at both ends of the pitch and almost everything in between when it comes to the Premier League in particular.
Our inability to keep a clean sheet is hurting us and making life more difficult with additional pressure being put on ourselves early on in games, while we’re failing to take big chances and that’s a huge problem too.
Coupled with the lack of confidence and conviction in our play in possession and lack of intensity and urgency off the ball, it’s all a recipe for frustration and disappointing results, and so something has to change, and hopefully that starts in midweek before we host Southampton next weekend in two pivotal games in our season to date.