Aston Villa salvage a point to buy a beleaguered Steven Gerrard a bit of a lifeline

The pressure has been building on Steven Gerrard at Aston Villa, but has a second-half goal from Leon Bailey against Manchester City bought him a little more time?

Five games into the new season, Steven Gerrard’s job was hanging by a thread. Aston Villa went into the weekend one place off the bottom of the Premier League, with just one win. A swell of pressure has been building up amid the club’s support for some time, and there have been rumours of unhappiness behind the scenes. And then Manchester City rolled into town.

Is it even going to be reasonable this season, to judge teams by what they do against Manchester City? Should Gerrard get called to the boardroom first thing on Monday morning, you can imagine the conversation. ‘It’s not just the last match alone, Steven. I mean, it’s really, obviously not about that last match alone.‘

A home match against Manchester City shouldn’t really be the barometer by which Steven Gerrard’s future with Aston Villa is judged, but these things are never really fair, are they? He’s already at to the point at which you can only sustain your position by getting result and continuing to do so. If a large enough proportion of the supporters have already turned on you, results have to flow, no matter who the opposition.

But the Manchester City that arrived at Villa Park on this occasion were strangely lethargic throughout much of this match. They stroked the ball around attacking positions like Blofeld stroking his cat throughout the first half, but for all this very impressive possession, they seemed to have little impetus to actually get the ball into the Villa penalty area.

But on this occasion, the Iceman did not cometh, at least not in the first half. Indeed, Erling Haaland being man-marked by Tyrone Mings throughout the first half felt a little at times like a battle between Godzilla and Mothra, in which the most likely victim might turn out to be the infrastructure of Villa Park itself.

Haaland, of course, looks anonymous until he suddenly doesn’t any more (that’s kind of his thing), and City’s best opportunity of a soporific first half fell to Kyle Walker, who blazed high and wide when he may or may not have been offside. Their pass completion rate was sensational by half-time. Their goal completion rate, less so.

And perhaps surprisingly, the best chance of the half fell to Villa. After 37 minutes of watching Manchester City pass the ball around among themselves, Villa got a foot on…