Aston Villa enter a pivotal few days in our season this week, and Unai Emery should have one clear priority in our preparation.
Villa have now gone eight games without a win across all competitions, and what was initially thought of as a slump in form, is now threatening to become a crisis.
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Brentford and Southampton visit Villa Park in the Premier League over the course of four days, and if Villa don’t find a way to get back to winning ways in these two fixtures, the pressure will significantly build on Emery and the players.
In truth, there hasn’t been a lot that has worked or been to the standard expected in recent weeks, but one glaring issue that must be fixed is our defence, as it has been exposed week after week.
From a 36 percent clean sheet ratio in the 2022/23 campaign, that figure dropped to 21 percent last season, and currently sits at 7.7 percent through the opening games of this year.
Villa have conceded 21 goals in the league so far this season, giving us the 14th ranked defence in the top flight, while we’ve kept just one clean sheet thus far, which puts us bottom of that particular metric.
Those factors are not a recipe for a successful team, and given we’ve only conceded one goal in five Champions League games to date, what is the problem domestically?
It’s clear from recent performances that we’re now struggling to cope with the intensity and energy of the Premier League, as we often look passive and lose individual duels across the pitch.
Further, teams drop off and don’t press us, forcing us to either go to our full-backs to build our play or play a dangerous pass through the middle which often gets intercepted and puts us in danger.
There is a sense that we’ve been worked out to an extent, but conceding early in games, and often they are soft, avoidable goals when we are not defending at a suitable level, it’s putting us on the back-foot and piling on pressure as we have to chase the game from that point.
That in turn takes away our ability to play with control and at our own pace, and subsequently we start to lose our shape and structure which leads to a broken performance that allows the opposition to pick holes in our set-up and expose our vulnerabilities.
It’s easy to say we have to go back to basics and focus on defence, but it’s vital we find the right balance too. Ultimately though, it starts with building a solid foundation, and it’s down to Emery to make the necessary tweaks this week to make us more difficult to beat, and in turn put ourselves in a position to get six points from the next two games to allay fears that cracks in our armour represent a real threat to our progress.
