Wolves pounce as Villa look doomed
THE shouts that have echoed around Villa Park in the days since football’s restart are sounding more ghostly by the match.
In the emptiness, the despair of an Aston Villa team sliding closer and closer towards relegation felt even bleaker yesterday. Maybe the noise and the fury of a derby clash would have done something to crank Villa into life but here there was nothing to disguise their plight or their pain.
This defeat by Wolves not only moved their local rivals above Manchester United into fifth place and real contention for a Champions League place, but it also dashed Villa’s hopes of sneaking out of the bottom three on a Saturday when there were no other league games.
They are marooned there now and running out of matches. West Ham, in particular, will be breathing a sigh of relief.
Villa, in their fourth game in 11 days, have now gone eight league matches without a win. Critics have picked on their defence in the past but most worryingly for the home side, they never looked remotely like scoring.
Wolves are an accomplished side and pleasing on the eye but they were not at their best and Villa failed to land a glove on them.
Their next game is away at Liverpool. They will have to hope the newly crowned champions are still celebrating.
The mood at Wolves could scarcely be more different. They are unbeaten in eight league games and they won this match without ever moving out of second gear.
They left their most dangerous player, Adama Traore, on the bench for the best part of an hour but two minutes after he came on, he helped to set up the winning goal for Leander Dendoncker.
‘What’s in front of us will be very tough,’ Nuno Espirito Santo said when asked about Wolves’s chances of forcing their way into the Champions League places, ‘but it’s a welcome week to recover.’
Villa defended well but they need to find a way to score and to capitalise on the promptings of Jack Grealish and John McGinn. It does not help that McGinn is still feeling his way back from injury and was saved until the second half.
‘It is fine margins,’ said Villa boss Dean Smith. ‘We look a sound team, we’re hard to beat and I’m sure the teams we play will say that too, but we just need a bit of quality in the final third.
‘The fixture list is crazy. We’re the only team to do four games in 11 days, so thank you very much for that. It’s hard without fans but even harder when players are fatigued.’
After a turgid, disjointed start, Wolves forced the first chance after nearly 20 minutes when Joao Moutinho clipped a free kick to the near post and Raul Jimenez glanced it goalwards from six yards out. The ball was too close to Orjan Nyland and he gathered it at the second attempt. Jimenez knew he should have done better.
There were times in the first half when the play seemed so flat that it prompted the thought that sometimes the atmosphere generated by a crowd can disguise the poverty of a game. The atmosphere would have been wild and visceral inside Villa Park in other circumstances and maybe the lack of quality in the early stages would not have seemed so noticeable.
As the half wore on, Wolves’ quality was increasingly evident. Diogo Jota and Jonny played in clever patterns on the left, Ruben Neves orchestrated the game from midfield and one raking long ball from Conor Coady into the path of Dendoncker deserved more than the poor piece of control it met.
Coady was excellent again here., Assured on the ball, he’s a good reader of the game without it. It cannot be long before he forces his way into the England side.
Grealish finally conjured a Villa effort on target after 37 minutes when he drilled a low shot straight at Rui Patricio. Soon after, the Villa playmaker created a better chance, laying a pass into the path of Conor Hourihane who delayed just long enough for Jonny to make a fine saving challenge.
Four minutes before the interval, Villa nearly handed Wolves a bizarre opener. Nyland went to throw the ball out but, like Brighton’s Mat Ryan last week, the task seemed to confuse him.
Instead of releasing the ball cleanly, he lobbed it straight to Jota on the edge of the box. Jota was so surprised by his gift that he blasted his shot over the bar.
Wolves got the goal their class deserved on the hour. Nuno brought on Traore and the forward’s intelligence and guile yielded immediate rewards. Two minutes in, Traore wriggled away from a challenge in a tight space in the centre of midfield and fed the ball to Jimenez.
The Mexican moved it on to Jonny, who found Dendoncker on the edge of the box and he arrowed his left-foot drive low into the lefthand corner of Nyland’s goal.
Villa fought hard but the grim reality is that did nothing to discomfort their opponents. If they do not improve, they are heading back to the Championship.