I purposely chose to leave it a few days before speaking about the Liverpool defeat for several reasons.
The first, I didn’t see the game as I opted to go to the England v New Zealand T20 match at Edgbaston (which didn’t end any better despite a great day out!) and the second, I wanted to take in what was said by those who did see the game and try and watch some of the highlights.
As usual, with every Aston Villa defeat comes the overreaction on social media, it’s the norm now. It’s something we come to expect. There will be podcasts that overreact and then you start to see reasoned comments a few days later. I heard one comment about Villa being cursed, which made me laugh.
In truth, Villa struggled against a very good Liverpool side. Lessons will be learned and you can bet our current manager is analysing the defeat on Sunday and the one we suffered against Newcastle on the opening day of the season. He won’t be sunning himself up in Portugal like a certain former manager. This manager cares and wants to be successful. The defeats would have hurt him, as much as they hurt us, the fans.
Unai Emery has expressed numerous times that we are on a journey together and that doesn’t just mean through the good times so it’s vital we all stick together. Liverpool is a better side than Aston Villa at this moment in time and on another day we may have made more of a game of it but it wasn’t to be.
What is important is that we stick with the manager and the players and get ready to bounce back against Crystal Palace after the International break.
Liverpool 3-0 Aston Villa
New Liverpool man Dominik Szoboszlai got the hosts up and running just three minutes after the game kicked off. A corner was swung in and ran through a crowded penalty box and fell to the Hungarian midfielder who hit the ball with as crisp as you could into the back of the net.
Villa had been on a decent run of form since their defeat to Newcastle but this performance had signs of the opening day, especially from a defensive perspective and the home side soon doubled their lead after 22 minutes.
The ball fell to Darwin Nunez in the penalty box but his effort cannoned off the post and bounced back into the net after it hit Matty Cash.
Liverpool looked very dangerous in the first half and it didn’t help with the early substitution of Diego Carlos who went off with a muscle injury.
Some Villa fans would have hoped the reported rumours about Mo Salah moving to Saudi Arabia on deadline day had come true because the Egyptian, as he tends to do, caused Villa problems most of the afternoon. And five minutes before the hour mark he got onto the scoresheet himself.
Liverpool will have harder games and Villa will be much better this season but it’s vital that Villa learn from their two defeats so far this season.