> **Villa win at Brentford and Dave Woodhall is adding it all up.**
**We should have learned by now. Every time anyone questions the manager’s team selection they do so from a position of weakness because of one undeniable fact. He’s Unai Emery. None of us are.**
There was quite a bit of questioning when the team was announced. No Emiliano Martinez was bad enough, with Marco Asensio also missing. This on its own was enough to send the rumours into overdrive because players can’t have last-minute knocks anymore; they have to have had a fall-out with the manager, or other players, or the coach driver.
Axel Disasi was right-back, Leon Bailey started and there was no place in the line-up for Boubacar Kamara or Marcus Rashford, with a bench full of defenders for good measure. Even allowing for the opposition’s poor form there wasn’t a great deal of optimism at the start of a match Villa had to win to keep the hopes of a top five place alive but that’s what comes of a crowded fixture schedule.
I won’t say it was a scintillating display that confounded Unai’s critics, because it wasn’t. Villa won a largely forgettable game because we took our chance and Brentford hardly had any. Villa had the best of the first half and another well-worked free-kick should perhaps have seen Tyrone Mings doing better but that was about all there was to say.
Things improved almost immediately after the break, when yet again Youri Tielemans began a move that finished with Ollie Watkins scoring against Brentford once again. Perhaps he should stop celebrating them; not because it’s against his old club but because Watkins scoring against Brentford isn’t all that notable.
He should have got a assist a couple of minutes later, laying the ball off for Morgan Rogers. Unfortunately a slide rule and a telescope showed that one of the hairs on Bailey’s leg was a microbe offside. Brentford hit the post and screamed for a penalty while Watkins should have got his second after a late breakaway but one-nil it stayed until the final whistle. Unai, yet again, knows best.
Three points and Europe is still firmly the destination, on three fronts. Robin Olsen kept a clean sheet although he was helped by some magnificent defending. Disasi looked totally at ease at right-back, Tyrone Mings was back to his iconic, inspirational top form while alongside him Ezri Konsa had his best game for a while. Perhaps after spending a fortune on replacements, this pairing is still the best we’ve got.
A rare clean sheet, and an even rarer win after a European game. We’ve got another one of them on Wednesday, and then amazingly in a season where we’ve been playing every three days at times, once that’s over there’s a break of almost three weeks before our next assault on a trophy. The rest will do some good to the legs of players and wallets of supporters, but surely there should be a better way of planning the fixtures.
Still, that’s the price of success and long may we have to pay it.
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