How much pressure do Aston Villa want to put on one 90 minutes in Istanbul?
For all the celebrations in the past week after reaching a first European final since 1982, here was a timely reminder that Aston Villa haven’t secured Champions League football for next season yet.
They should finish in the top five. They should beat Freiburg in the Europa League final in nine days’ time, too. Either of those cash in UEFA’s golden ticket for entry.
But they also might not. That’s a reality Aston Villa need to be conscious of.
‘Very, very happy,’ Unai Emery said, to puzzling looks, in his opening monologue after this 2-2 draw.
‘You were making questions four months ago if we were contenders to win the title when we were two or three points behind Manchester City. I told you that day 34 you can’t make questions about it… now you are not making questions about it.
Unai Emery left Turf Moor with more questions than answers after another tough away trip
Burnley made sluggish Villa pay the price and they were good value for their point in this draw
‘It’s fantastic to be where you are. To be top five in the Premier League, for us, it’s something fantastic. Today the point is not enough, I know it’s not enough, but I know the difficulties to achieve three points here.’
Villa are not the same team that found themselves bombarded by title talk in the first half of the campaign. Even this uber-positive version of Emery knows that.
But natural order this season has been if you’ve got a problem and need a helping hand, come and pay a visit to Doctor Burnley.
Villa have a problem, too. This latest slip-up means Villa are winless in their last six away league games (D3, L3).
The last time they were this bad on the road it was an eight-game stretch between May to October in 2022, the final eight games before Emery took over.
But, this is a Burnley side with the worst home record in the league, having scored a league fewest 15 goals on their own turf, with two wins all season at Turf Moor. The last of those came 205 days ago against Leeds United when talk was just getting started about Halloween costumes.
And yet here was Villa, a side that looked like they’d have blown any team in the world away on Thursday, producing their own fright, in the end clinging on to a point that keeps Bournemouth and Brighton on their tails.
This was supposed to be the banker for Villa, who made only three alterations from the semi-final win over Forest and stuck with the big guns of Ollie Watkins, John McGinn and Morgan Rogers.
By contrast, Burnley interim boss Mike Jackson made six alterations from the team that got turned over by Leeds, one of which saw 21-year-old goalkeeper Max Weiss handed his Premier League debut.
‘We have not been good enough throughout the season, we know that,’ Jackson said. ‘But you can’t live in the past. You have to try and find a way as an individual, a team, as a group, to right what you do next.’
Four points would mathematically seal a top five spot and with it Champions League football. The idea Villa could sleepwalk into three of those points here blew up in their face inside 10 minutes.
Backing off Lesley Ugochukwu, Villa only had themselves to blame when Emi Martinez parried straight to Jaidon Anthony, who duly converted the rebound.
Martinez is a top goalkeeper, no one would deny that, but he’s picked up an odd habit of this exact thing this season, parrying right into the danger zone. By his standards, this was a costly mistake.
Emi Martinez’s error allowed Jaidon Anthony to open the scoring for Burnley nine minutes in
Ollie Watkins had one goal chalked off by VAR but his second saw Villa go into a 2-1 lead
But for as bad as this was for large spells, Villa looked to have salvaged the most precious of wins when, either side of half-time Ross Barkley headed in McGinn’s corner, and Watkins toe-poked in a 70-yard, route one kick from Martinez.
So, of course, they switched off again assuming the job was done and Burnley, inspired by the brilliant Hannibal Mejbri, punished them to leave Champions League hopes hanging in the balance.
This was a goal that is everything Burnley haven’t been this season. Inventive, incisive, sharp. Ugochukwu hustled to win the ball back wide on the left and picked out Mejbri in the box, who had the wherewithal to backheel to Zian Flemming, who had missed two huge chances earlier in this game.
And so it’s on to Liverpool on Friday night, days out from a first European final in 43 years, when rotation feels inevitable. Lose that and turn that pressure dial up to the max for Istanbul.
Talk about making life hard for yourselves.
