Aston Villa look wafer-thin and now you *really* fear for Wolves – it’s the F365 Blackout
Aston Villa have finished seventh, fourth and sixth in the last three seasons under miracle worker Unai Emery, but getting this team anywhere near the frame would be his best trick yet. Elsewhere, it’s a great weekend for the Bs but horrible for the Ws.
Brentford 1-0 Aston Villa: Paper-thin Villans wage battle with themselves
The season is already only one-and-a-half weekends old, but it already feels like a significant course correction.
Newcastle, Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest have all been enormously effective disruptors over the last couple of seasons, yet all are now in some degree of distress. Newcastle have endured a notably miserable summer, starkly reminded at every turn that even when they pull off Champions League qualification they remain, at best, the seventh biggest draw in the league. Villa’s squad has been trimmed to the bone in a desperate bid to do something about that unsustainable turnover-wage ratio. And Forest have decided, for some reason, to descend into all-out civil war.
Meanwhile there is already some pretty compelling evidence that even the more reliably stupid members of the Big Six may, in fact, not be quite so stupid. Spurs are top of the league with five goals scored and none conceded having been De-Anged in remarkably swift and efficient style by Thomas Frank, while Manchester United looked far more coherent against Arsenal than we’ve been used to seeing – albeit with the caveat that even last season they could sometimes dredge up a performance based on muscle memory as much as anything else when faced with one of their old title rivals from back in the day.
But of those three disruptors, it’s Villa that currently appear furthest off it. Scrambling a point with 10 men against Newcastle in the It’s Not Fair Derby wasn’t so bad, but the limp nature of defeat at a Brentford team stripped of its manager and so many crucial players is thoroughly damning.
The gut feel is that this performance from Villa is one that will only look worse and worse as Brentford and Keith Andrews’ season develops.
It is the lack of depth that troubles you most about Villa now. They need a big and creative 10 days to finish this transfer window. You cannot be missing a grand total of three squad players to injury and suspension and find yourself turning to Emi Buendia as your first sub and expect to be a serious competitor on four fronts. Or any fronts.
It’s a wafer-thin squad with what already looks like a daunting balancing act to get results on the pitch across the season and off the pitch over the next week or so.
And they will still inevitably have to expend more energy than they’d like in repelling bids for Morgan Rogers, who simply cannot now be sold because their won’t be time to reinvest and perhaps more importantly because of the sheer joy vacuum it would create.
Bournemouth 1-0 Wolves: You fear for them, you really do
Why are Wolves always like this? It seems every single season begins with Wolves looking utterly wretched and this one is already no exception. It’s been a wonderful weekend for the Premier League’s B teams, but double trouble for the Ws.
West Ham look broken, and Wolves not much better. The good news for Wolves, if there is any to be found, is that they at least know the road out of precisely this kind of mess, having walked this road before. But at some point they will surely push their luck one time too many, and a season where all three promoted clubs already have wins to their name might just be it.
As for Bournemouth, a real nerve-settler of a victory and confirmation that Andoni Iraola may be some kind of genius. Having seen almost his entire defence picked off by the bigger beasts this summer he has still managed to put a team out to give Liverpool an almighty scare and now collect what might look a huge early three points when the final reckoning comes.
Burnley 2-0 Sunderland: Burnley join promoted pals in winners’ enclosure
Last season, it took until October 5 for any of the promoted sides to claim a win. By matchday two, all three of this term’s Premier League newbies have tasted victory while highlighting the importance of making their home a fortress.
On opening weekend, Sunderland terrified West Ham into submission at the Stadium of Light, while Leeds subdued Everton at Elland Road. Burnley were beaten at Tottenham, but such games are not those upon which the Clarets will build and sustain a survival campaign.
Today felt like the proper start of Burnley’s season in what might go on to be viewed as the earliest ever six-pointer. And while the first half looked more like a Championship encounter, the hosts produced the only flickers of Premier League quality while Sunderland regressed to the mean following the euphoria of last weekend.
That was all that separated last season’s Championship runners-up and play-off winners. You often got the feeling that both sides would prefer the other to have the ball, with Sunderland’s blueprint for promotion and opening day success being to cede the ball, break and seize on moments. But Burnley turned the tables, sitting in to deny the Black Cats any opening, especially in open play, after a couple of early half chances.
The moments that really mattered were conjured up by Jaidon Anthony and Josh Cullen. First, the former flicked into the path of the latter, who curled a sublime effort around a Sunderland screen into Robin Roef’s bottom corner. Then, while Sunderland faced an even more rigid Burnley backline, Cullen bent a gorgeous pass behind Granit Xhaka for Anthony to round Roefs and finish.
Any expectation of Burnley staying up seems to stem from their incredible defensive record, especially at home, last season. Of course, that will be huge. But they can’t bank on such stinginess against Premier League opposition so their capability on the break will be even more important than it was last season. The moments that sunk Sunderland offer encouragement that Scott Parker’s men are capable of hurting teams rather than simply stopping them.