View: Aston Villa will loathe to see ease of Crystal Palace equaliser in 3-1 defeat
Aston Villa were beaten relatively convincingly by Crystal Palace on Saturday (21 August) and Steven Gerrard has to change something.
The Villans were off to the perfect start when Ollie Watkins burst into the Eagles’ penalty area and blasted the ball beyond Vicente Guaita but they were quickly put back in their place.
Wilfried Zaha bagged a brace to turn the game on its head before Jean-Philippe Mateta completed the scoring at Selhurst Park to give Patrick Vieira’s side their first win of the campaign.
For Aston Villa, it was a second successive away defeat and the nature of Zaha’s first goal will be something that should keep Gerrard up at night.
The first problem the former England captain will have with the equaliser will be how deep in Palace’s own defensive third the assist came from.
Not a single Villa player made any attempt to close the ball down properly and keep the possession close to the goal they were attacking even with a one-goal lead early on.
The next thing he will question is how the midfield failed to intercept a ball that bounced multiple times on its way to the Ivorian trickster.
There is no reason why Boubacar Kamara should have been anywhere except in the path of the pass and this compounded what was a disappointing day for the Frenchman.
There was also a severe lack of effort in tracking back from the players further up the field as Zaha powered away from the majority of the Villa players to tuck in the equaliser moments after the visitors had gone ahead.
Gerrard has to make this abundantly clear to his players and make some large changes in the way they play because being beaten this easily is not really acceptable.
In other Aston Villa news, Vieira explained how he set up his Palace side to beat the Villans.