Burnley 1 -2 Villa; Massive three points, but bad news too

Credit to https://www.flickr.com/photos/graham_pride/albums/72157662420335941

A very happy new year!
It is for us Villa fans anyway.

How great was it for us to get three points today when practically everybody, myself included had written this one off a a “no chance”?

Maybe Dean Smith reads the Villa websites after all, but it wasn’t rocket science that made him go five at the back, was it?
Whatever, it worked and the defence in the first half particularly, looked much more confident.

Jack Grealish played more centrally and you can see the difference it makes.
He’s much more involved where the real action is and even managed to bring Wesley into it for a goal.

It’s taken the manager a while to realise this, but fair play, he made the changes and they worked.

That said and I’m not trying to detract from the performance, but Burnley looked a really poor side, especially in that same first half. We were beating them to all the second balls in midfield, which made a really pleasant change.

As for the goal that was ruled out for Wesley being offside, what an absolute joke.
Even BBC sport said the goal should have stood. I was reminded of Liverpool’s goal against us and it was almost identical. I said then that their goal should have been classed as good, so you can’t say it’s bias on my part.
VAR is supposed to be looking at obvious and clear errors.
That simply wasn’t one.
My hope is that they will sort this over time, but in the meantime my concern is that it’s decisions like this that can turn games and maybe even get a team relegated.
If it’s that close to call, just don’t bother with VAR, simple.

I’m tempted to brush over the second half, but basically we knew Burnley would come out all guns blazing and we looked a lot poorer, being sloppy, sitting back and nearly letting them back into the game.

The bad news is that both Wesley and Heaton have possibly suffered Anterior Cruciate Ligament injuries, which can leave a player out for many months. As a worst case, we might not even see them again this season.
But I’m sure another player had the same injury not so long back and recovered a lot quicker. I just can’t think who it was.
Regardless, we have no choice now, but to get a decent striker in and hopefully we’ll have already been planning for it.
Kodjia, who I’ve often espoused should start for us, looked horrendous today. Some say it was a lack of interest, but the commentators I listened to said he looked leggy, even though he’d only been on a few minutes.
Which makes sense, given that you’d think he might want to put himself on display for a move. He definitely didn’t look in good shape.

Ultimately, it was a decent first half against a very poor Burnley which got us three points and got us out of the relegation places.
I’m not sure how long that will last, but I’m happy to say I got it wrong in my prediction.

Up the Villa and happy new year!