Steve Bruce was on the touchline at Villa Park for the first time since a fateful cabbage took flight, and his side delivered a suitably underwhelming performance. Fortunately, he’s in charge of Newcastle now, and it was Dean Smith’s Villa who walked away deserved 2-0 winners.
Nothing’s easy in the Premier League, as we saw at Molineux. Though Villa sit about where we might expect, we’ve left points on the pitch and things remain fairly tight outside the top end of the table. What do Villa need to do better in the upcoming run of matches?
If Villa are going to find ways to slow the traffic and relieve pressure, they have to hold the ball better. They have to get upfield and settle more, not just counter full tilt and go right back to defending because we simply do not have a deadly striker to make those breakouts count.
An intriguing fixture, Man City. Villa have played a couple of quality sides already, and we’ll all be hoping they’ve learned from what they did right, and where they let things slip away.
“It’s been coming” has been verdict, and, it’s true. That’s Dean Smith football, and it’s now Aston Villa football. We’ve taken a lot of leads, and we finally got the second Smith’s been pointing to. Create, convert, and force the opponent to open up and give us the room to create more opportunities. We’re here to play, and here to offer up positive, exciting performances.
