As Bad As It Gets

Sunday 23rd October 2022: Premier League: Villa Park: Aston Villa vs Brentford

Right, for this blog I’m going to skip over my long (3 trains) journey to Villa Park other than to implore you to get off at Witton station instead of staying on till Aston. Not only is it a stop earlier on the way out of Birmingham New Street but the walk also takes half as long, which will help if you’re running late for kick-off. I wouldn’t want to be running late for kick off though as that would have robbed me of the only part of the day I truly enjoyed, seeing the outside of the stadium.

As you have seen above, Villa Park is a gorgeous stadium from the outside with the stunning red brick Victorian facade that dropped my jaw to the floor when I saw it for the first time. There are also plans to expand the ground which the club is currently consulting with the home fans on. As an away fan can I ask that included in this stadium expansion is a vast improvement in the facilities provided for away fans.

Having bought and eaten a dish called ‘Poutine’ I headed inside and this was where my day went from glorious to disgusting. Whilst the ground looks incredible from the outside this clearly comes at expense of the facilities inside, not only were the turnstiles set up for people no wider than a single human hair but when you reached the upper tier, there was only one refreshments counter.

The options when you eventually reached this counter were miniscule at best as you could either have iced up cold drinks or tea, with alcoholic drinks only available in the ‘family’ away section below. To say this upset many of my fellow away fans would be to distinctly understate the magnitude of the anger that permeated the stand around me. Though it would not take long before me and my fellow away fans would have far bigger problems to be pissed off about.

Villa were starting their life in the post-Gerrard era, having sacked their former manager mere days earlier after a 3-0 loss to Fulham on the preceding Thursday evening. They would also finish that game with only 10 men on the pitch, but Douglas Luiz’s red card had been rescinded since that match, so he started for Villa in this one.

The post-Gerrard era for the hosts got off to the best possible start as they waltzed through some seriously inept Bee’s defending to take the lead within 65 seconds of kicking off. Leon Bailey burst down the left wing, with Mads Roerslev trailing in his wake flipped in a cross that was blocked behind for a corner at the very last second. The corner was taken short and, with no-one from the visiting defence coming out to close them down the ball was simply whipped out to the feet of Leon Bailey on the penalty, where he was given the freedom of Villa Park to sweep the ball home past the statuesque David Raya.

There was no meaningful attempt from anyone in the Brentford side to put any pressure on the ball at any point during the whole of the first 45, with the right side of our ‘defence’ appearing particularly suspect. Roerslev and Zanka hadn’t played a lot of football together coming into this match and the lack of understanding was on full display here, as Villa exploited it ruthlessly.

Having taken the lead so early on and with complete mastery of the field, as they tried to prove their worth to the club after a string of abysmal results under Gerrard, it was only a matter of time before Villa increased their lead. When their inevitable second arrived, the only surprise was that it had taken them a full seven minutes to score it. Once again it came from an attacking foray down the left wing, with Roerslev proving increasingly inept at right-back, before the cross was put on a plate for Danny Ings at the back post to apply the simplest of tap-ins to double Villa’s lead.

Whilst I have been singling Mads Roerslev out for particular criticism so far in this blog, I wish to make it abundantly clear that he was not the only Brentford player who was having a game from hell. In point of fact, throughout the first half, the only Brentford player who was looking like they had heard of the concept of football before was Ivan Toney. He was charging round the pitch trying to close Villa players down, imploring his teammates to put in even a modicum of effort and single-handedly attempting to arrest the momentum of a match where his team were being played off the park. Alas, his work was to no avail however as it took just another 7 minutes for Villa to add to their lead once more.

Less than 15 minutes into their post-Gerrard era Villa were 3-0 up against a team who had been 7 places above them at kick-off. The hosts had been struggling in the weeks before this match and their run of form had left them hovering above the relegation zone on goals scored. If you didn’t know those facts before kick-off though you could easily have assumed that Villa were title-contenders and Brentford were 10 points adrift at the bottom.

Villa’s third goal came from a penalty, given for an incident that looked like nothing at all, I couldn’t even begin to guess at what happened to see the pen given. Once the penalty had been given though it fell to Danny Ings to complete his brace with a piledriver down the centre of the goal. Raya would have saved it if he had stayed rooted to the spot, but in keeping with his teammates’ performances he dived out of the way of the ball instead.

The hosts were now in complete cruise control and were able to do whatever they wanted with the ball as the Bees sting had been completely and utterly neutralised. Villa should have had a third goal before the penalty to be honest as a simple route one hoof upfield by Emiliano Martinez that took the whole visiting team out of the game, except Raya who stood strong as a brick wall to prevent Villa making it 3 goals in 10 minutes. Instead, it took them 15 minutes to get their 3rd goal and every time they came forward it looked certain to provide them with another goal to add to the glut that they had already collected.

The vast majority of Villa’s chances were coming down their left as Roerslev was suffering the worst humiliation by an opponent that I have ever seen one player experience on a football field. Things became so bad for him that in the 25th minute a throw-in from Toney to him, where Ivan spent 30 seconds beforehand explaining to Roerslev step -by-step what he was going to do, ended up falling into acres of space after Roerslev had run as far in the other direction from where the ball was going as possible.

Babysitting Roerslev was costing Toney so much of his time that he was unable to do his own role in the team. It was beginning to look as though Toney had developed an allergy to the penalty box, he was having to come out to the wing to do Roerslev’s job that often. It got to the point that, as the match ticked past the half hour mark, I made a voice note that Thomas Frank should substitute Roerslev now to “save him from himself today”.

To be clear, Roerslev was not the only player I wanted to see substituted at half-time. In my notes I said we should take off “Jensen, Roerslev… I’d take off Onyeka as well” as these were the three worst performing players from a team where competition for that ‘accolade’ was frighteningly fierce. It seems that Thomas Frank was thinking along scarily similar lines to me too, as he broke his habit of a lifetime to make two half time substitutions. Roerslev and Frank Onyeka were the players he decided to save from their humiliation at the break even replacing them with the players I’d suggested in my notes, Sergi Canos and Josh Dasilva respectively. Jensen would last till the 78th minute before being replaced by Shandon Baptiste.

Brentford limped to half-time with the score remaining at 3-0, which flattered them immensely given their abysmal performance so far. There was a 5-minute period after the restart where it looked possible for Brentford to get back into the match before normal service was resumed. Villa went back to pummelling Brentford to a pulp but it would take till just before the hour mark for them to score their 4th goal of the match.

When that 4th goal came for the hosts it was only fitting that the icing on the visitor’s humiliation was applied by an ex-Bees player, Ollie Watkins. This time though the build-up came from a powerful run down the left wing, their free access down the right having been closed down by Canos since he entered the field. The ball was curled deliciously in, past the flailed legs of Zanka and Pinnock, to the feet of Watkins. His first shot from 8 yards out was parried straight back to him by Raya, but he made no mistake with his second cannoning the ball in off the right post to complete Villa’s quartet of goals.

Brentford continued to be abysmal throughout the rest of the match and the only reason Villa failed to add to their glut of goals was that they proceeded to time waste ad infinitum for the final 30 minutes of the match. Seeing that time wasting was such a relief for me as it allowed Bees to crawl our way to full time having conceded only 4 goals, when the scale of the gulf between the performances of the 2 teams should have seen us lose by at least 7-0. We really were that dreadful.

Brentford’s away from so far this season has been indescribably dreadful, with the recent 5-1 humiliation at St. James’ Park the perfect example of this fact, but this was the worst performance of the lot. I hope you understand by now that Brentford should have lost this match by far more than they did and a more clinical team would have made it to double figures with the dominance that Villa had throughout this match. That’s just how bad Brentford were in this match.

Given my next two tickets to Brentford games would see me follow their travels to Nottingham Forest and Manchester City respectively I was devoid of hope for positive results from either match. The train strikes saved me from having to visit the City Ground, but I had no such luck this past weekend so, with no alternative, I traipsed off to the Etihad expecting to see City smash at least 8 goals past the hapless travelling Bees.

Surely you will have seen the result of that game by now, so you know just how wrong I was about that. Join me later this week as I immortalise the greatest experience of my life into blog form. All I will say about that match right now is that I have never been happier to have been proved wrong about anything in my life….