View: Three things learned as Aston Villa draw 1-1 at Nottingham Forest
Aston Villa made it four games unbeaten but couldn’t overcome the league’s worst side as they drew 1-1 at Nottingham Forest.
Ashley Young’s sweetly struck equaliser in the 22nd minute cancelled out the home side’s opener, which came Emmanuel Dennis nodded in a Morgan Gibbs-White free-kick after a quarter of an hour.
The Villans remain in 16th after the point, but they become the first team since 20 August to allow Steve Cooper’s side to get anything from a game.
Here, Villa News looks at three things learned from the game at the City Ground on Monday night (10 October).
Fight is there, but quality isn’t
It was a testy kind of game throughout with numerous flashpoints between both sets of players, likely born out of frustration with their respective situations this season.
Douglas Luiz was present for most of them, while Emi Buendia got involved with Cheikhou Kouyaté before the half, and Jacob Ramsey was booked then substituted after one too many reactions to attempts to rattle him from the home side.
That is probably a good sign in the grand scheme of things, as it suggests a squad who care enough to be annoyed about how things are going.
At least the players didn’t let the action meander meaninglessly by them and did seem to be up for the fight, but the bad news is that it more or less ended up with the same outcome anyway.
The only moment of real quality was when 37-year-old Young fired an arrow into the bottom corner from outside the box, for one of only two shots on target against a side that had lost five straight, conceding 18 goals along the way.
Steven Gerrard may need to set his sides up in a different way but they aren’t getting anywhere near the level they should be at the moment and hardly look like a team ready threaten the top half.
The two biggest stars might be the two biggest problems
With Leon Bailey injured Gerrard opted to start both Philippe Coutinho and Emi Buendia, to half-satisfy everyone who has been calling for the Argentine to replace the underperforming Brazilian in the XI.
When the manager was looking for some late impetus it was his former Liverpool teammate who was withdrawn of the two, suggesting that even his most ardent supporter is starting to grow impatient.
Unfortunately for Gerrard, and everyone else, the record signing wasn’t must more effective than the ex-Barcelona man, as the scoreline and the lack of quality chances that were created showed.
Villa are playing functional, attritional football at best currently, which really shouldn’t be the case with two creative talents of the level of the South American pair in the side.
Jamie Carragher suggested on Sky Sports before kick-off that Gerrard’s influences as a manager, Gerard Houllier and Rafa Benitez, both set up to get a clean sheet and hope for their star men to produce some magic.
The former Liverpool captain isn’t getting anything of the sort from either of his, so the time may have arrived to leave them both out and try a completely new approach.
Cameron Archer still exists
The 20-year-old forward hadn’t been spotted on a football pitch in an Aston Villa game since August when he came on in the 89th-minute against West Ham, for an appearance that could itself have easily been missed if fans had left early.
He was introduced with nine minutes remaining here and the lack of confidence appeared evident soon after when two minutes later he beat his marker to get his head to a deep cross into the box from the left flank.
An in-form goalscorer would surely have gone for goal in a dangerous position like that, but having worked himself into position to potentially be the hero the youngster instead attempted to head the ball back across the box for a teammate, and ended up doing a reasonable job of clearing it for the defence.
Ollie Watkins played the full 90 minutes for the sixth game in a row without finding the net, while Danny Ings came on with 25 minutes left and couldn’t either, which it could be argued is as much an issue with Coutinho and Buendia as it is them.
But Gerrard sticking with Watkins isn’t getting him anywhere, while Ings’ sparing use and Archer’s almost non-existent game time appears to be having a negative effect on all three.
The fact that Archer even got a chance this time suggests that the manager is at least considering a change of approach, but it feels like the distance he is willing to stray from his preferred line-up is still far too small, and the time he takes to get there far too long.
The Villans haven’t lost in four but it was another night with little to get excited about.
Your fill-in left-back rolling back the years to fire one in from range should be a bonus in a game against one of the league’s major strugglers, not the pick of the action, and it is difficult to see where Aston Villa are going to find a spark right now.
In other Aston Villa news, one player got a miserable 1/10 in the player ratings from the game at Forest.