Thread by @CottageTactico

Penalty misses, red cards, deflected goals and own goals 🤦‍♂️

On what turned into something of an ‘anything that can go wrong will go wrong’ sort of afternoon, the thing that really went wrong in #FULAVL was our midfield

Let’s take a closer look with some match analysis

🧵 1/10

After a bright opening I never felt comfortable in this one, so it was slightly surprising that even not accounting for our pen we edged xG 🧐

Big moments which swung momentum went badly wrong, but looking at the general pattern of play (as I will here) the loss was coming

In my pre-match thoughts I said I was worried that by engaging too readily out wide in build up, Fulham would get overrun in the middle of the park 😬

Initially you could see our plan to avoid this. With both wingers coming in tight to restrict space for central progression

But, though their first goal was a horrible deflection its roots were in something that went wrong regularly 🤦‍♂️

After Fulham overcommit the midfield is utterly exposed on two occasions as Villa draw attention one side then the other, to create wide open space centrally

Whilst structurally Villa worked central overloads to stress out the CMs. All three really struggled individually (particularly 1st half)

ESR, too deep in search of the ball, oddly anonymous when he got it and worryingly lethargic OOP seems to be getting a free pass for now 🤷‍♂️

Not so much for Andreas. Should he have taken the pen? Absolutely not. But it was Marco’s decision

Would I have hooked him much earlier for TC as he seemed rattled and gave it away lots after? 100%

But the jeers as he was taken off were a sad low point on a day with plenty 😤

I was actually more alarmed by a tough intro to being a lone 6 for Sander Berge

He seemed overwhelmed at times, ghosted past too often, not winning any tackles and struggling to link play

Early days. But a sobering reminder of how much Lukić has been doing

Let’s take a moment to credit some standout performers in a game many of their teammates would rather forget

Raúl Jiménez took his goal well but also felt like a one man army, leading us in duels won (at ST!)

Confident, classy & combative to the end in a rare 90 min outing 🇲🇽

With the midfield faltering Alex Iwobi was at the heart of pretty much everything constructive Fulham did 🇳🇬

As well as being hugely progressive and driving us forward he also offered physicality we lacked. It was telling that Marco saw moving him inside as a solution…

And we’re going to need solutions. Even with Andersen playing, Villa worked out how to show us left to Bassey in build up. He struggled without an option on the turn

With no Joa we’ll need way more leadership and control in the middle next week… time to call for our captain? 🦸