Aston Villa have a major penalty problem – in the age of VAR, I can’t defend it
Only one Premier League team wasn’t awarded a penalty in the whole of the 2024/25 season. Of the 83 penalties given, at least two went to every team except for Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Aston Villa took six penalties in the Premier League last season and converted three. Ollie Watkins scored both of his. Marcus Rashford scored his. Marco Asensio failed with two attempts in the same game and Youri Tielemans missed against Crystal Palace.
Mercifully, they haven’t had one in the league this season. Penalties have become a serious problem for Villa and the team’s inability to score them has proved costly.
Watkins had one saved against Bologna without consequence but Villa went out of the Carabao Cup on penalties and spurned the chance to equalise in Thursday’s embarrassing Europa League defeat against Go Ahead Eagles.
Emi Buendía fired over in Deventer and it’s a concern that the common thread between the two failed Europa League attempts is that the players who took them looked as if they wanted to be anywhere in the world but where they were.
Villa don’t have a penalty taker and it shows in their record from the spot. Watkins has missed too many to stay on spot kicks and after him there’s nobody in the squad I’d back to be any more successful.
That’s a shambolic state of affairs and it’s no triviality. Penalties matter more than ever. There are elite penalty takers who are so reliable that it’s a genuine shock on the rare occasions when they don’t score.
To overlook this aspect of the game is unacceptable and Villa are starting to pay the price for doing just that.
The importance of penalties in the VAR era
There have been 606 penalties in the Premier League since the introduction of the video assistant referee (VAR). 81.2% of them have been scored.
Villa have scored 73.1% of their Premier League penalties in that period.
| Season | Total Penalties | Scored | Not Scored | Villa Penalties | Scored | Not Scored |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024/25 | 83 | 69 | 14 | 6 | 3 | 3 |
| 2023/24 | 107 | 96 | 11 | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| 2022/23 | 97 | 74 | 23 | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| 2021/22 | 102 | 84 | 18 | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| 2020/21 | 125 | 102 | 23 | 6 | 5 | 1 |
| 2019/20 | 92 | 67 | 25 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| Total | 606 | 492 | 114 | 26 | 19 | 7 |
Since VAR was brought in, Villa account for 6.1% of missed penalties in the Premier League. Considering Anwar El Ghazi and Douglas Luiz both played for the club and scored a bunch of penalties in that time, that’s a troubling stat.
Penalties aren’t a rarity or an anomaly. They happen all the time. For Villa to find themselves in need of a goal and without anything like a penalty taker on the pitch is negligent and it’s a problem that clearly isn’t being taken serious enough.
Buendía was the closest thing to a penalty taker against Go Ahead Eagles. He didn’t want to take it. He was never going to score it. But look around the team at the time and he was the outstanding candidate.
Cup football demands penalty abilities
It’s not hard to understand why Villa lost to Brentford in a penalty shoot-out last month. We largely brushed that defeat off – it was just one of the team’s poor performances at the start of the season and the League Cup was the last priority – but there’s every chance Villa have to win a shoot-out in the second half of the season.
That thing they don’t have in the team? They need five or six of them.
Leaving goals on the table in the Premier League would be a major issue in its own right but it would be unfair to condemn the team for something that hasn’t happened yet.
But the Europa League and the FA Cup are key focuses for Villa this season and if they’re going to have a good run in either or both of those competitions they’ll be flirting with the possibility of a penalty shoot-out all the way.
How can a team of Villa’s quality not be ready for that? Unai Emery isn’t an idiot. Austin MacPhee isn’t just ignoring part of his brief. There’s no lack of technical ability in the squad. Why can’t Villa scare up a handful of twelve-yard sharpshooters to get the job done when the moment comes?
Have Villa overlooked penalties?
Villa are often accused of not having the mentality for big moments. It’s been cited as a factor after Buendía’s miss in the Netherlands.
While there is undeniably a psychological element that explains the gap between the ability of these players and their penalty misses, the collective mindset isn’t really the issue.
Players missing penalties against Bologna and Go Ahead Eagles within the first three fixtures of an eight-game Europa League schedule is not the same as the team fluffing their lines in the FA Cup semi-final or the last game of the Premier League season with Champions League football on the line.
Scoring penalties is a skill. It’s a process. It’s practice.
This is routine stuff. These are the kind of penalties accomplished, prepared takers gobble up with ease. It’s the lack of those that reveals a flaw in Villa’s recruitment in the last couple of years.
Nobody would advocate the club bringing in a special teams penalty taker with no other attributes but penalties have to be a consideration. Now they’re a problem of Villa’s own making and they’ll be lucky if it doesn’t do them more significant damage after the turn of the year.
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