Aston Villa brought the curtain down on an excellent pre-season tour of the USA on Sunday, with a highly entertaining 3-3 draw with Brentford in Washington.
Goals from Ezri Konsa, Moussa Diaby and Matty Cash sparked a superb turnaround after we fell 2-0 behind, and while Brentford were able to secure a share of the spoils, it was another positive display from Villa, who now return to the UK for the final part of our pre-season schedule.
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It is of course all geared towards being at our best when we travel to St James’ Park for our Premier League season opener on August 12, and that starts a busy second-half of the month given our league commitments and a Europa Conference League playoff round.
In turn, it’s hoped that the squad is moving in the right direction, and this game certainly helped to deliver some important solutions.
Emery experiments and finds answers
As expected, our three games on this tour were likely to be an opportunity for the Villa boss to not only rotate, but to also test various tactical solutions available to him with the players at his disposal.
While we saw Konsa play at right-back in midweek, it was Pau Torres who shifted across to left-back against Brentford, tucking inside in possession as Cash was given license to get forward on the opposite flank.
With different combinations across the pitch and tweaking of positions and roles while giving some of our youngsters minutes to impress, the Villa boss hopefully feels much better prepared for the new campaign and confident when trying various options out.
Diaby showing his influence
That’s two in two for our summer signing, as he has showed quality movement, composure and finishing to make an instant impact in front of goal.
Beyond that though, his link-up play with Ollie Watkins was impressive at times, as was his ability to build attacks with his new teammates and speed up our play in the final third to cause problems for the opposition.
Diaby has wasted little time in settling in and making his mark, and it’s hoped that this is just the start and that he can deliver consistently moving forward when the competitive football gets underway.
Villa’s attacking play a joy to watch, improvements needed defensively
Some of our attacking play on Sunday was exceptional, as we showed great composure and accuracy in our passing to open Brentford up and create goalscoring opportunities, having initially struggled in the early stages.
The players look comfortable in their roles, confident in what’s been asked of them to remain disciplined enough to stick to the plan and the tactical demands being made of them, and it often leads to flowing football that is evidently worked on meticulously in training to create patterns of play to unlock the opposition.
While Brentford showed quality themselves in attack, there will be obvious areas in which we can still improve defensively to tighten things up, and so that will hopefully be established when the new season starts.
End of a brilliant USA pre-season tour
It’s been an excellent tour for the Villa squad by all accounts, both on and off the pitch. We’ve seen some superb backing from the Villa fans over in the US, and they’ve been treated to some great football.
As with any pre-season tour, it’s hoped that we’ve been able to make progress in what we’re trying to establish and implement for the season ahead, but also for the squad to grow closer together and become more of a ‘small family’ that Emery often speaks about.
While it was a shame that we were missing some key individuals as the likes of Jacob Ramsey and Alex Moreno missed out due to injury, it’s still been an important fortnight that will hopefully be a vital reason behind our success in the next 10 months.
Do we have enough quality depth?
It was brilliant to see our bench look so strong this past week, as Emery was able to bring in real quality for those being replaced to maintain a high standard.
That said, are we still lacking in certain areas? Emery has found alternative options but we’re arguably a little light in the full-back roles, particularly on the right side, while we could perhaps still do with more quality up top.
The Villa boss has insisted that we’ll be ready to move if a priority option presents itself that will significantly improve us, while further exits are expected too in order to create space in the squad and additional resources to help balance the books. In turn, it could yet be a busy few weeks to end the transfer window for Villa, but we undoubtedly look a lot stronger than last year already.