Former Aston Villa forward Garry Thompson has dropped a worrying verdict on Aston Villa’s 1-1 draw at Zrinjski Mostar in the Europa Conference League.
The Villans did all they needed to do on Thursday night in Bosnia.
After five matches in the Europa Conference League group stage, Aston Villa had secured four victories, which meant they only needed a point to secure their place in the round of 16 and a point is what they got.
Heading into this contest, Unai Emery rested first-team stars Emiliano Martinez, Ollie Watkins and Boubacar Kamara but awarded rare starts to Leander Dendoncker, Jacob Ramsey and young goalkeeper Filip Marschall.
As such, Villa struggled to find any rhythm in the game with Zrinjski Mostar sitting back and soaking up pressure.
And that pressure eventually told when Nicolo Zaniolo slid home his first Aston Villa goal thanks to an inch-perfect John McGinn assist.
Villa would have expected to coast to a 1-0 victory but Matija Malekinušić equalised for the hosts three minutes from time as the spoils were shared.
Following this result, Garry Thompson claimed that Emery would have been concerned with the performance.
Garry Thompson says ‘It could have gone horribly wrong’ for Aston Villa
Speaking to BBC Radio West Midlands after the match, he said:
“Going into this game we knew a point would do but you would expect them to win the game.
“Aston Villa had an awful lot of possession, didn’t cause too many problems but they had a sloppy 10 minutes where they caused their own problems and could have gone 2-1 down. It could have gone horribly wrong and Unai Emery’s face shows the face of a man who is not impressed with some of the things that have gone on.
Despite qualifying as group winners, Thompson expected Villa to rampage past a team that had only secured one victory in their five previous matches in the competition.
That said, the Villans did experiment with a change of system and started a whole host of players who were lacking in match sharpness.
Should Unai Emery be concerned?
Contrary to what Thompson believes, Emery shouldn’t be concerned with the result and performance in the slightest.
As Watkins alluded to previously, it is difficult to go away in Europe on a Thursday night and come away with three points.
Villa got the job done without needing to over-exert themselves ahead of Sunday’s trip to Brentford and have now qualified for the last 16 of the competition.
Those matches don’t kick off till March, so Aston Villa can put their full focus into their Premier League exertions.
