Scroll through social media and you will see the various memes.
They might feature cartoon figures gazing longingly at trophies in the Villa Park cabinet that were won in the 1980s and 1990s, or a mock-up of the open-top-parade bus returning to the garage for another year.
Aston Villa’s 2-1 loss at home against Crystal Palace in the Carabao Cup last 16 on Wednesday provoked diverging opinions.
Some, understandably so enthralled with Unai Emery’s managerial brilliance and the club’s ongoing Champions League campaign, insisted they did not mind a fourth consecutive home defeat in the Carabao and FA Cups combined. Others took it as another display of disrespect towards England’s cup competitions and offered a reminder Villa, whose most recent trophy came in this competition in 1996, could now be in the quarter-finals (where Palace will visit Arsenal in December) and on track to go deep in what is, ostensibly, the easier of the two domestic cups to win.
In truth, the answer lies somewhere towards the middle ground.
The argument is nuanced; you do not have to staunchly defend Emery for naming a substitutes’ bench with an average age of 20 years and two months or for making 10 changes from the league draw against Bournemouth at the weekend. Conversely, you do not have to be so adamant in viewing the matter through the prism of a missed opportunity.
Still, no one person is above criticism or below praise and Emery’s actions felt at odds with his words. It was only last week, having achieved Champions League qualification at the end of last season, that he declared his “next dream” was to win a trophy with Villa and rubber-stamp this impressive era with something tangible.
A goal down with 10 minutes of the 90 to go on Wednesday, Emery brought on three academy graduates in Jamaldeen Jimoh-Aloba, Kadan Young, both 18, and 20-year-old Lamare Bogarde. All three are prodigious talents and well thought of at the club, yet it seemed jarring that the only senior attacking option on the bench — 23-year-old Jacob Ramsey — remained on the sidelines, stretching, as they entered the fray.
Afterwards, when Emery arrived for his post-match press conference, he was wearing a team-branded Adidas tracksuit with white trainers, which is his preferred cup-game attire and different to the more formal outfits he dons for Premier League matches.
When challenged by a journalist, Emery said he had no regrets over his team selection. “If I repeated this game 100 times, I play with the same players,” he said. The Spaniard remarked upon the number of accomplished players who started against Palace, such as Tyrone Mings — playing his first game in 445 days after injury — Diego Carlos, Ian Maatsen (who started last season’s Champions League final for Borussia Dortmund), John McGinn, Leon Bailey and Jhon Duran.
Palace counterpart Oliver Glasner backed up Emery’s reasoning: “We are different to Villa because we play Wolves next and then we have a free week, whereas they are in the Champions League and played a game (in that competition) last week and will also next, so they have to rotate.”
This did not follow the orthodox narrative of a manager just playing the kids. It was true Villa had a more than ample starting XI to compete against a Palace side who had only rotated their goalkeeper from the weekend’s line-up. Crucially, though, focusing on this would defeat the actual point; the real issue centred on the absence of game-changing firepower on the bench.
For instance, Emery could rightly point to Palace picking up injuries to key players Eberechi Eze and Adam Wharton and evidence that playing his strongest team would have been a recipe for disaster. Few supporters would contest this, but the preference would have been for a more experienced, and proven, set of substitutes.
Pep Guardiola has increasingly made no secret of how little incentive this competition offers Manchester City. Though even he, despite a raft of changes to the starting XI, named Erling Haaland on the bench on Wednesday night against Tottenham Hotspur (albeit he stayed on it, as City were beaten 2-1).
Ollie Watkins, Villa’s relative comparison to City’s Norwegian centre-forward, was left out of the matchday squad altogether, as he had been in the previous round against Wycombe Wanderers of League One, English football’s third tier. On that occasion, several of Emery’s first-choice players were given a few days off, with England international Watkins deciding on a break to Monaco. Five days later, he was back in the team and scored in a 2-2 draw away to Ipswich Town, perhaps justifying the decision for some.
Generally speaking, there is a tendency within football to look towards the end of the season and pine for Champions League qualification when, in the present moment, you are playing Champions League football.
More people sympathised with the Carabao Cup defeat at home against Everton a round earlier last season and provided mitigation. That came against the backdrop of Villa embarking on their first European campaign in more than a decade one week earlier and they were far more likely to go on to win the Conference League then than they are to emulate the club’s heroes of 1982 in the Champions League next May. Consequently, the yearning for silverware was quickly pacified, safe in the knowledge the team would go deep in UEFA’s third-tier club competition instead. Europe’s blue-chip tournament is far more uncertain, despite Villa being joint-top after three of the initial league phase’s eight matchweeks.
If the purpose of competitive sport is to win trophies, then this loss to Palace is galling.
Discounting the 2019 Championship play-off final that brought promotion back to the Premier League, Villa have not won a trophy for going on 29 years. It remains a precious and rare achievement and one which, if you pull it off, will be indelibly remembered. Would finishing fourth or fifth this season, having reached the round of 16 in the Champions League, be viewed as favourably in decades to come?
The opposite side of the fence takes a more holistic view. Naturally, sustained success in the Premier League and playing in Europe means increased revenues. Greater financial might creates the ability to sign better players and would culminate, eventually and some way down the line, in a higher chance of winning silverware.
Yet the variables of what might happen in the future are incalculable. Getting knocked out at home with a quarter-final place on the line by opponents who were still without a league win this season as recently as Sunday can only be assessed properly at the end of the campaign, once the question marks regarding potential fatigue and a hectic spring schedule are answered.
Days out at Wembley and winning trophies are what a club, fundamentally, plays for. For the first time this season, Villa’s squad has no key injuries and they have reached the stage of Emery’s revolution where a trophy can be within reach and is more than deserved.
(Top photo: Malcolm Couzens/Getty Images)
