Aston Villa players’ faces at full-time on Thursday said it all about their night’s work against Go Ahead Eagles.
There was a pained look across the majority of them; a mix of annoyance but also downright disbelief that they lost the game.
Aston Villa’s 100 per cent Europa League record came to an end in Deventer, Netherlands on Thursday as they lost 2-1 to Go Ahead Eagles, despite taking the lead and winning a late penalty.
Evann Guessand scored in the fourth minute, setting Villa up for what many would have thought would be a routine victory after beating Bologna and Feyenoord in their first two games.
Mats Deijl and Mathus Suray scored in each half against the run of play to put Go Ahead ahead, before Emi Buendia missed the target with a 79th-minute spot-kick.
How did it go so wrong against Go Ahead Eagles?
Go Ahead Eagles’ revenue last season was just £18.1million, while Aston Villa‘s starting line-up boasted combined transfer fees of over £250million.
If you, for some reason, looked at the stats of the game in Deventer and not the scoreline, you probably would have assumed that Villa won comfortably, by two or three goals.
According to Sofascore, Villa boasted 70 per cent of possession, registered an xG of 2.82 compared to Go Ahead’s 0.3 and had a whopping six big chances to score.
Ex-Birmingham and Watford striker Troy Deeney believes the overall performance does not suggest there’s a wider issue for Unai Emery to be worried about, based on the overall display by the Villans.
“For Villa, I think the result is actually worse than the performance,” said Deeney on talkSPORT on Friday.
“The performance wasn’t bad. They had a lot of shots, a lot of chances and Buendia missed a penalty.
“If you perform like that over the course of time, you’ll win more games than you’ll lose, so they’ll kind of put that down [the result] being a bit annoying.”
- Read more: Martin Keown raves about ‘Wonderful’ Aston Villa midfield star after what he did vs Go Ahead Eagles
Admit it, Villa fans – Troy Deeney is correct
Before heading to the Netherlands, Emery’s men were in good form.
They’d won five games in a row in all competitions, beating Feyenoord and Tottenham in the process.
In front of goal, it just went totally wrong against Go Ahead, who pulled off what could be seen as one of the biggest upsets in the Europa League this season.
- Villa missed five out of six of their big chances, while Go Ahead missed just one of their two
- Go Ahead won a higher percentage of ground duels (51%) than Villa (49%)
- Despite being dominated in possession, Go Ahead committed just one error that led to a shot
- Emi Martinez‘s goal prevented stat was minus one, meaning he conceded one more goal than he should have
- Go Ahead goalkeeper Jari De Busser’s goal prevented stat was +1.72
What lost Villa the game was clearly a failure to take their chances and a poor bit of goalkeeping from Martinez.
Emery cannot legislate for what is meant to be one of the best goalkeepers in the world making errors against Go Ahead Eagles, nor can he be blamed for Buendia missing a spot-kick.
It wasn’t Villa’s night, ultimately. And they’ll be geared up to bounce back this weekend when they welcome title-chasing Manchester City to Villa Park.
Expectations will be the polar opposite of what they were on Thursday – and that could work in their favour.
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