Losing at Bournemouth on the opening day of the season was a bad look for Aston Villa, and the nature of their defeat all the more so.
The result was bad and there can be no sugar-coating that. But for Aston Villa supporters catching up on their team’s 2-0 opening weekend defeat at Bournemouth, the nature of the performance might have been even more troubling than the result it produced.
Despite it coming with less than three minutes on the clock, there was an element of bad luck about the opening goal. Lucas Digne was off the pitch receiving treatment for a nosebleed when the first corner of Bournemouth’s return to the Premier League was not successfully cleared, allowing Jefferson Lerma to score from seven yards under no challenge.
This was bad enough for Villa, but there was little over the remaining 88 minutes to suggest this early goal was just an unfortunate accident.
They were sluggish and half-formed throughout the game, their chances largely limited to speculative shots from distance that made for comfortable saves for the Bournemouth goalkeeper Mark Travers, or which sailed high and/or wide.
A second goal with ten minutes to play wrapped up the points for the home side.
Aston Villa at times seemed stuck between two somewhat different tactical set-ups. There was no high press, but neither did they sit back deep in the hope of inviting their opponents to push too far forward and open up gaps behind them.
Instead, there seemed to be something like a halfway house going on, neither flesh nor fowl, and a formation which offered their opponents all the advantages of playing against a high press with none of the pressures that such a tactic is supposed to bring.
All of this makes for an uncomfortable start to Steven Gerrard’s first full season as manager. And in the trigger-happy world of modern football manager recruitment, this likely means that he will likely only have a few weeks to fix what went wrong on Saturday.
Villa’s last match before the first international break of the season – which is likely to be the first point at which those triggers start to be pulled – is against Southampton on September 16, just seven games away.
There’s a sticky period to come at the end of this month when they have to play West Ham United, Arsenal and Manchester City in successive matches.
The last time Bournemouth were promoted to the Premier League in 2015, they kicked off with a home match against Aston Villa. Villa won that game 1-0 but…
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