If at first your tactics don’t succeed, try, try, try and try again. Aston Villa haven’t scored a goal in five games and now they’re in a world of Premier League pain.
Villa came out of the September international break in 19th place in the Premier League and that’s where they’ve stayed thanks to another goalless draw.
In many ways, Saturday’s stalemate at Everton was their best performance of the season. That says more about the other three and is rendered immaterial by the fact that any football team in the midst of a bad run is supposed to be working to get out of it.
Villa’s predicament was already baffling but now it’s concerning too.
Failing to score against Manchester United at the end of last season was a massive kick in the teeth. Its consequences, probably, are lurking somewhere in the reasons for what’s happened in the last five weeks. Given the injustice served up on that day at Old Trafford, supporters understand as well as anyone how difficult it’s been to move on.
But with each new goalless, toothless, timid, boring, dreadful performance this season, the excuses wear ever thinner even for those of us who were mindful of the impact of certain matters on the human beings among the playing staff and the team around them.
No more excuses for Villa
But financial restrictions didn’t draw at home with Newcastle United without laying a finger on them.
Losing Jacob Ramsey didn’t beat Villa at Brentford or at home against Crystal Palace.
It’s been a difficult start to the season for reasons that probably aren’t entirely to do with football but the much needed reset of the international break also zeroed the supporters’ willingness to cut the team some slack.
Nobody within Villa has gone public in blaming outside forces for their form. The manager and players alike have owned their shortcomings but they’ve complained about the same things supporters are annoyed about too.
Saturday’s game at Everton wasn’t so much about the result for Villa – arguably a draw is a good result, given Everton’s home form in 2025 and their wins this season – but about supporters seeing something different.
Around and around and around we go
Most managers don’t really change their shape all that much. Unai Emery has tweaked the function of his this season and unless you’re expecting him to abandon his fundamentals when it comes to formation, that’s as much as we can realistically expect.
There’s nothing inherently unworkable about the shape but the players and partnerships and performances within it have been almost uniformly appalling from the word go.
Certain players have been deployed out of position. Others haven’t played well. Others still have been borderline embarrassing.
These are issues that have needed dealing with since opening day and haven’t been rectified. Emery’s four changes against Everton weren’t bad calls in isolation and Emiliano Martínez, Emi Buendía and Lamare Bogarde were Villa’s best players, but for a team without a goal to leave new attacking signings on the bench boggles the brain.
Underperforming players are only part of the problem. Villa are playing pedestrian football by design.
It looks prepared and deliberate, especially when Martínez is in goal and styling out the waiting game, but Emery’s steadfast adherence to the principles of drawing on the opposition press is killing Villa this season.
They tried it against Everton. It worked at times but then Villa just pumped a lazy one into midfield or tried to drop a pass on the toe of Ollie Watkins from 60 yards away, and gave Everton the ball back. Occasionally they just coughed it up to the pressing players directly to save everyone the bother.
Villa have done this in all four matches this season and have created next to nothing. That’s not just because they have players making individual mistakes or even because the tactic in its purest form isn’t paying off, but because it sets Villa up to play without energy or speed and it’s affecting the entire performances.
The net result of Emery’s strategy is four awful showings, two points and no goals. Each game has been harder to justify, harder to excuse, than the last.
Villa won’t play a different formation in their next league match. It might not be a popular opinion, but they probably don’t need to.
What they do need is to get on the front foot, to be aggressive, to create chances, to score goals. It’s been too slow. It’s been too passive. If they do the same thing again, they should expect the same result. It’s past time for Emery to recognise that.