Despite playing against 10 men for over half the game, Aston Villa were unable to see off Ipswich and were forced to settle for a 1-1 draw on Saturday afternoon.
Axel Tuanzebe was given a second yellow card after 40 minutes, but the visitors took the lead at Villa Park shortly after the halftime interval as Liam Delap turned home a cross to break the deadlock.
READ MORE: What Unai Emery said in assessment of Villa’s disappointing draw vs Ipswich
While that added more pressure on Villa, we were able to find an equaliser with just over 20 minutes to go through Ollie Watkins, but despite having chances to complete a comeback, we were unable to do so.
That in turn leaves us in ninth place in the Premier League table and with a lot of work to do to close the gap on those above us in the battle to secure European football for next season.
Poor defending continuing to cost us
Once again, Villa were guilty of conceding a soft goal which made our afternoon tougher, as Delap bagged the opener for the visitors despite the fact that they had spent most of the game defending deep and in numbers.
Whether it was Ian Maatsen’s failure to do enough to stop the cross from coming in or four Villa players being around Delap and failing to prevent him from getting his effort off, it was another example of how we keep conceding poor goals.
These details matter, and if we don’t tighten things up and consistently become harder to break down, we’re going to continue to be left disappointed and frustrated at various points in the remainder of the campaign.
Wasteful Villa fail to show ruthless finishing
That said, we still had enough chances to kill this game off and secure all three points, but our failure to do so ended up costing us.
Watkins had a big chance with the game still goalless, and who knows how the encounter plays out if we break the deadlock and have a lead to protect, as opposed to having to break down a side defending really well and making us work to find a breakthrough after going behind.
We’ve been ruthless and clinical in games this season and it leads to some of our best performances of the year. However, we have to be more consistent in front of goal and take chances, otherwise it will continue to cost us.
Rashford, Asensio make positive impact but lack end product
While Marco Asensio in particular was guilty of missing two great opportunities to score his first Villa goal, there is no doubt that both the Spaniard and Marcus Rashford made another positive impact off the bench.
The pair help add rhythm and fluidity to our play with their positional awareness and technical ability on the ball, and Asensio did brilliantly to find pockets of space to put himself in a position to be decisive.
He’ll be gutted that he couldn’t convert his chances, while Rashford came close to helping us find a winner after his free-kick crashed off the crossbar to fall to Watkins to score off the rebound, and so the attacking duo may well be pushing for a starting berth in midweek against Liverpool.
Disasi, Garcia positives but goal makes dent
It’s hard to ignore the goal that we conceded and how that negatively reflected on Disasi given his poor marking, but the loanee had a positive debut overall as he added physical presence to our backline defensively.
Further, he played some excellent passes to show he can be an important fit for how we want to play out from the back, and so it remains to be seen if he gets another opportunity to shine in midweek.
As for Andres Garcia, he showed plenty of positive intent with his attacking play again as he continues to impress, and he offers important defensive cover too with his positional awareness, with the Spaniard continuing to make a positive impression.
Villa fail to take advantage of big opportunity to close gap
Given some of the results elsewhere this weekend, this will go down as a big opportunity missed for Villa to close the gap on those above us in the battle to secure European football for next season.
It was a game we should have won given the chances that we created, but we’ve ultimately dropped two points at home to 10-man Ipswich in what could prove to be a costly result come the end of the campaign.
It’s a continuation of an underwhelming Premier League season in which we’ve struggled to build sustained momentum, and unless we find answers quickly to transfer our Champions League and FA Cup performances and results to the league, we’ll find ourselves falling short of our objective in this particular competition in the coming months.
