FC Basel 1-2 Aston Villa

Villa notched another Europa League win, this time away to Basel. We even had royalty on hand in the form of Roger Federer. At the end of the night, Villa found themselves still third, down to goal differential again. Which has become sort of a thing.

At the beginning, it looked like Villa might easily address the shortfall. Composed, unhurried, winning the ball back with ease, Villa seemed like they could cruise to a 3- or 4-0 win. Alas.

There were a couple early warnings, but Evann Guessand made himself useful and scored a gritty and clever goal to put Villa up. But then predictably Basel got a bit more involved while Villa seemed content to safely work their advantage instead of pressing it. A narrow offside kept Villa ahead, but then a perfect delivery from an unnecessary free kick confounded Bizot and Basel were level.

From there, well, if you watched, it looked like a lot of our European nights: harder work than it needed to be. Composure waned, decision-making worsened, and Villa couldn’t seemed to be arsed to up the tempo much. Second-half changes saw us through, though it was nervier than it should have been down the stretch for lack of a third goal (and considering the players introduced). Villa did raise the pressure, but let themselves down elsewhere. Basel seemed for all the world to have given up, then came to life again when they saw they still had time to get something. Tielemans’ halftime introduction proved decisive, in the end.

Now, one obviously understands Villa are playing these matches with one eye on the following weekend. And so are all the other Premier League clubs. As noted, PL teams performed very well across the board this week, which, in broad strokes, illustrates the strength of the league. West Ham may be struggling, but they’re a far harder test than Basel could ever be. But you got the sense the players could’ve shown a bit more urgency. Basel were really just poor, overall, deserving a larger deficit.

Could well be the case that Emery’s usual starting XI would’ve put Basel to the sword more comprehensively, but rotation is necessary for all the reasons.

As far as individual performances go, mixed bag. Lindelöf was good, though a couple times I couldn’t understand why he overlooked Digne streaking ahead in acres of space. Bogarde had a fine game, really seems to have matured. Digne and Cash, what you’d expect. Konsa good, too, but also a bit wobbly and hesitant in places. Malen didn’t figure heavily. Buendia was a bit up and down, but did provide the assist for Youri. Onana did his bit. Guessand got his goal, but seemed to get worse with the ball as the game wore on. He did stick to his defensive duties.

Sancho was pretty much useless throughout, and for the life of me I can’t understand why he doesn’t try a shot when he gets it out of the low overlap and can come back across goal. Anything to get going. Seems absolutely bereft of confidence. Bizot, well…The goal was tricky. Maybe the bigger Martinez snuffs it out, or plays it differently. The delivery was a keeper’s nightmare.

So, job done, but one can’t help feeling Villa squandered an opportunity to get closer to that second-leg advantage. Our next two matches look to be more difficult on paper. But as Canadian Ian has noted to me more than once, Villa do seem to play down to the opponent’s level. And we have to remember they expended a lot of energy and emotion taking down Arsenal just prior.

Three points, useful minutes for everyone, a fair amount of rest for some key figures. It was just lacking the killer instinct.

Over to you.