Unai Emery looks completely out of ideas as uninspired Aston Villa falter again

There comes a time when even the best managers simply have nothing left to teach a group of players, and when the methods that previously worked wonders for them begin to lose their effectiveness. On the current evidence, Unai Emery may well have reached that point at Aston Villa.

Emery has done wonders for the club over the past three years, but it’s difficult to escape the sense that he may have reached a point where he is flat out of ideas as to how to get his uninspired side back into form.

Villa started the day still without a Premier League goal this season, and there has been nothing particularly unlucky about that: they also had the lowest expected goals per game in the division.

Emery’s response to that was to shake up his team in a bid to inject some fresh impetus int– oh no, wait. It was pretty much the opposite of that.

The only player to have scored an Aston Villa goal this season – new signing Harvey Elliott, who scored in the League Cup against Brentford in midweek – was left on the bench. The only changes from their snoozefest of a goalless draw away to Everton last weekend: the injured Youri Tielemans was replaced by the so-far-unconvincing Evann Guessand while defensive midfielder Boubacar Kamara started in place of Lamare Bogarde.

We honestly don’t know what Emery expected to be different from sticking with almost the same side, but funnily enough he got much the same result. Just as Emery seems to have run out of ideas, what Villa produced was the football equivalent of a piece of chewing gum that has completely run out of flavour.

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Morgan Rogers was a ghost, and the few times he did get on the ball, he would give it away. Ollie Watkins cut an even more spectral figure; the only reminders that he was on the pitch came from John McGinn repeatedly bringing patient passing moves to an end by smashing it vaguely in the striker’s direction. Guessand had one big moment in the game and wasted it, putting a very presentable chance from a set piece straight at the goalkeeper.

Villa’s whole approach was frankly bizarre. With three number 10s on the pitch, Villa were incredibly narrow, and the centre of the pitch was less a midfield than a crowd. Yet Villa repeatedly played the ball, achingly slowly, straight into the congestion, like a driver stubbornly ignoring the diversion signs pointing for them to simply go around a road closure and then getting confused when they found their route blocked.

Even after Sunderland went down to ten men late in the first half thanks to a moment of sheer stupidity from Reinildo Mandava – a petulant kick out at Matty Cash after being fouled by the Villa full-back – there felt to be little prospect of Villa actually scoring.

It was actually Sunderland who looked more likely to do so after the break, only for Omar Alderete’s header to come back out off the crossbar.

That Villa finally broke the deadlock after over an hour of play owed nothing to a moment of inspiration, or any indication that they had started to figure the game out; Cash simply walloped it from 25 yards and was delighted to see Robin Roefs haplessly misjudge his swerving shot and punch into his own net.

Villa had already got away with one scare; they didn’t when Sunderland next threatened. Wilson Isidor was the fastest to react to Granit Xhaka’s simple header over the top of the Villa defence, and side-footed home an equaliser

You have to compliment Sunderland for how they went about their business. If you had turned the game on at half time, you wouldn’t have noticed they were down to ten men.

But that’s also damning of Villa’s lack of inspiration and creativity. The final 10 minutes aside, it’s not as though Sunderland responded to that dismissal by just throwing everyone behind the ball, trying to make life difficult for Villa, and playing for a point; much to the contrary, they had more shots on goal in the second half than they had in the first.

Yet still Villa kept repeating the same old patterns to the same lack of effect. An Elliott shot that flew narrowly wide of the post was the only time they looked at all like restoring their lead. We can’t in good faith count an injury-time chance for Watkins off a Jadon Sancho cross when he didn’t even make contact on it.

Emery has come through bad spells and got them back to winning ways before at Villa, but the malaise has never felt as deep as it does right now. The Europa League specialist will be hoping for something radically different against Bologna on Thursday night – but to get that, he’s probably going to have to be willing to actually try something different.

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