Matt Maher analysis: Villa’s best season in years book-ended by big defeats
A match between a team who did not want the season to end and another whose already had pretty much turned out the way you imagined..
Crystal Palace 5 Villa 0 was, from the latter’s perspective, mercifully no more than a scruffy footnote to an epic, the 56th and comfortably most meaningless match of a campaign in whichWes Edens’s team overcame the odds and hit heights few thought possible.
No-one likes losing, not least in this manner. This 10th league defeat of the season, courtesy of Jean-Philippe Mateta’s hat-trick and a double from Eberichi Eze,
was Villa’s heaviest in the Premier League for more than four years and bookended a season which began with them conceding five at Newcastle.
And yet just like that result, it will be quickly forgotten in the minds of most, thanks to everything which has happened in between.
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If nothing else, this experience will have reinforced for Emery what Villa must do next. Their most important meeting of the week did not take place at Selhurst Park but Bodymoor Heath, where Emery will sit down with owners Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens to thrash out plans for a summer where the club must first negotiate profit and sustainability rules but also strengthen if they are to stand any chance of continuing upward momentum.
If nothing else, this experience will have reinforced for Emery what Villa must do next. Their most important meeting of the week did not take place at Selhurst Park but Bodymoor Heath, where Emery will sit down with owners Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens to thrash out plans for a summer where the club must first negotiate profit and sustainability rules but also strengthen if they are to stand any chance of continuing upward momentum.
