Villa 0-0 Sheffield Utd; Very, very lucky, but not too bad.

You couldn’t make it up.
If you wanted a big story for the first game of the restart, what would be better than goal-line technology massively failing and VAR then failing to overturn what was a blatantly obvious goal not given?
If I was a cynic, I’d almost think it’s a case of the Premier league soap opera having given us yet another fantastic episode on a par with Angie and Den’s divorce in Eastenders.
Hmm.

So we’ll have to go with the two failures happening as purely accidental.
It’s a good job it happened for us, as it obviously earned us a point, but you have to feel sorry for Sheffield, as that might just have caused them to miss out on Europe. I genuinely hope it doesn’t affect their chances.

So what about the actual game?
Well, I can see that some of you are not at all impressed, but I actually thought we were okay.
I very much expected Sheffield to dominate us. They didn’t. At all.
In fact, I thought we were the better side by some way.
We created more chances. We stopped them playing mostly and most importantly didn’t look anything like the shambles of a defence that we did earlier in the season.

Not that Sheffield looked to try much and they did indeed make it much easier than expected for us.
But we really should remember that our opponents today are overall a better side who are challenging for Europe.
Yes, it would have been nice if we’d gained all the points today, but secretly I’d got this down as a 2-0 defeat today. I just didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to come across as too negative.

Kienan Davis, while still not being able to seriously threaten the goal gave a highly encouraging performance. He managed to get in the right positions quite often and gave their defenders plenty to think about. He worked hard and was particularly unlucky when he just couldn’t quite reach a nice ball in from the right by El Ghazi, I think it was.
If he looked like an instinctive striker with the way he heads or kicks the ball at goal, I’d say we have a brilliant prospect on our hands. Sadly he just doesn’t, but maybe it will come.

Grealish did well with his runs and one through ball was sublime, but I thought his first touch was often too slow. Again, that’ll definitely improve with playing time.

And I thought John McGinn stood up pretty well, in his first game since the new year. It was obvious he’d tire.

And the rest of the players were ok too, with nothing much to complain about.
Except perhaps for Nyland who should have done much better for the none-goal.
I’d agree, it wasn’t an easy ball, but he didn’t get anywhere in taking charge of it.
And you tell it massively unsettled him.
I must admit I was wondering why Steer hadn’t been picked and I also wonder how he’d have managed with that particular ball in.

But I’m not going to be too critical on the first day. It’s not unusual to see totally non-typical performances and the results normally have very little bearing on what follows afterwards.

But given that our defence has been our biggest problem this season, if we can show improvement in that area we shouldn’t abandon hope just yet.