Aston Villa boss Unai Emery insisted his side competed well in our 4-1 defeat to Crystal Palace, but it wasn’t enough.
After a scrappy start to the encounter at Selhurst Park on Tuesday night, Villa began to find some rhythm and threaten, but it was Ismaila Sarr who broke the deadlock for the hosts after 29 minutes.
READ MORE: Villa player ratings vs Crystal Palace: Woeful display leads to heavy defeat
Villa hit back after the interval through Morgan Rogers, but goals from Jean-Philippe Mateta, Sarr and Eddie Nketiah sealed the victory for the Eagles, and a deserved win for them given their level of performance compared to ours.
While Emery fairly points out that we started well and responded positively after half-time to get back into the encounter, there’s no denying or playing down how bad we were around those periods, particularly from a defensive perspective.
We’ve now conceded 45 goals in 28 Premier League games so far this season, giving us the sixth worst defensive record in the league, and that is not a hallmark of a team competing at the top and looking to challenge for major honours.
“We were competing well until the first goal we conceded. Good positioning and we were dominating the match. We have one goal [ruled out],” Emery is quoted as saying by BBC Sport.
“The first chance they had, they scored. Then they got some transitioning. Second half we tried to come back, but then we scored, and we were excited and motivated to try to continue controlling the game with our positioning.
“They scored the second goal, and we lost our positioning, we conceded transitions, and they scored two more goals. It was a tough result. We competed well, but it is not enough – we move on.”
On injuries: “We have some players injured, but we will not use this excuse. We have to focus on the Premier League. Now we have two competitions [FA Cup and Champions League to play].”
Emery will know better than anyone that our defensive record simply isn’t good enough, and if we continue to concede so many soft and avoidable goals on such a consistent basis, it’s going to keep costing us or at the very least, making our job much harder having to always fight back or score several goals.
We’ve yet to find a fix or solution for our defensive vulnerabilities, frailties and mistakes all season, and so doubts will persist over our ability to make a late push in the league to try and secure a top-five finish, while it could prove to be costly to our hopes of advancing in the Champions League and FA Cup too.
While we can look at positive angles, it was a shambolic display at times in the second half, and a woeful result. If we don’t identify and address our defensive weaknesses going forward, it will continue to hold us back from achieving our objectives and damage our progress into becoming a top team.
Injuries, schedule and other key issues have been contributing factors to our problems, but there is a standard and level that we must meet regardless, and defensively, we’ve not been doing that consistently enough this season.