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What's gone wrong at Villa?

Villa’s lack of goals has felt like a surface-level issue for a team with many deficiencies. The league season is only five games old, yet the mood among squad and supporters alike is already weary.

Players have spoken privately of feeling the pressure and, throughout the summer, eagerly awaited renewed impetus via the transfer market. The atmosphere around the training ground, already low, is expected to worsen this week. Internally, there is a flatness. Throughout last week, close observers speculated on the cause, but none could find the root issue. 

It is a collection of everything, starting with last season’s final-day defeat at Manchester United, where Villa missed out on Champions League qualification on goal difference. Emery’s thousand-yard stare at the full-time whistle that afternoon — unlike here, he stuck around on the touchline to the end of the game — would be the mood of the summer around the club.

The gambles to sign Marco Asensio and Marcus Rashford on loan in the winter transfer window, parting with many hundreds of thousands of pounds per week on their wages, brought improved performances but did not result in a second straight year of Champions League football.

Starved of the revenue Europe’s blue-ribbon competition would bring meant a long, painful summer of discontent, with players not knowing whether they were coming or going. Villa’s financial run-ins with both European football’s governing body UEFA and the Premier League were extensive and remain complex. 

Villa’s frustrating transfer window and attempts to justify and mitigate performance levels feel at odds with the ‘no-excuse culture’.   (In the past some Villa managers were known for ther great big book of excuses). Emery hammered home to his players during their run to securing Champions League qualification at the end of the 2023-24 campaign.

Emery castigated his players as ‘lazy’ after the draw at Sunderland, but that sort of talk can lose you the dressing room.

I respect Villa as the regional team of the Midlands, but can they really break into the top six or aee they simply reverting to the mean?

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