It felt very strange, disconcerting even, to watch a top-five Premier League side at the weekend waving the white flag of surrender so meekly against a team that had the chilly fingers of relegation closing round their necks.
“Angry fans claim Unai Emery’s line-up against Spurs needs investigating,” read the headline on the Daily Mail’s website after Aston Villa’s obliging 2-1 home defeat to Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday.
Other newspapers and media outlets reported the same. And while it is not usually recommended to base entire articles on social-media discourse, it was easy to understand on this occasion why so many people had been worked up into a froth of indignation.
Emery had made seven changes to his team, conscious that Villa had a six-point cushion in the Champions League qualifying positions and prioritising their Europa League semi-final against Nottingham Forest on Thursday.
His team went on to produce the most half-hearted performance you might see from any club in England’s top four divisions this season. Don’t be fooled by the scoreline. Villa were atrocious and the ramifications for West Ham, in particular, could be grievous bearing in mind Spurs have gratefully leapfrogged their London rivals to move out of the relegation places.
Don’t assume either that this might be the last occasion this season that something of this nature occurs.
Just imagine Crystal Palace’s priorities if they were to get to the Europa Conference League final. Oliver Glasner’s team have a 3-1 lead over Shakhtar Donetsk from the first leg. The return fixture is at Selhurst Park on Thursday and, if Palace make it through, they will head to Leipzig, Germany, on May 27 for the first-ever European final in their history.
Yet, three days earlier, they have a Premier League game that might go a long way to deciding the destination of the title. Their opposition on May 24 is Arsenal, currently locked in a two-way battle with Manchester City for the silverware. And who, realistically, could imagine Glasner fielding a full-strength side against Arsenal if the alternative is to keep back his first-choice XI for the final?
Unfortunately for City, five points adrift with a game in hand after their draw at Everton, there isn’t a whole lot that can be done about it.
They can feel aggrieved, yes, and we can be sure there will be complaints about the integrity of the competition being in question (not that City, for obvious reasons, usually get much sympathy on that front). Yet it would be futile calling for investigations or top-level intervention when the reality is that if City were in that position — or any other team, for that matter — they would do exactly the same.
The same applies to West Ham, as the team that has suffered the most from Villa’s anaemic performance at the weekend. West Ham, indeed, should know better than most that this is not a new development. They have, after all, been on the other side of this story in the past.
On the final day of the 2006-07 season, West Ham needed a point at Manchester United, then the best team in the country, to avoid relegation. Sir Alex Ferguson’s team had already secured the title and, the following weekend, played Chelsea in the FA Cup final. So you can probably guess what happened next. Ferguson held back some of his big-hitters for Wembley and Carlos Tevez’s goal meant West Ham winning 1-0 at Old Trafford to send Sheffield United down instead.
Neil Warnock, then Sheffield United’s manager, never forgave Ferguson for his team selection. “I was disappointed. You would have hoped and thought that, in the last game of the season, Cristiano Ronaldo, Nemanja Vidic and probably two or three more, might have played,” he said. “I think Sir Alex sold me a dummy in midweek when he said he would field a strong team. Maybe the FA Cup final is more important to him.”
The previous weekend, Liverpool had a game at relegation-threatened Fulham. Yet Rafael Benitez, the Liverpool manager, was also preparing for a Champions League final against Milan and rested players for the trip to Craven Cottage. Fulham won 1-0 and stayed up.
“At least I knew the players that (Manchester United) were playing,” Warnock added. “I didn’t even know two of those that played for Liverpool at Fulham… but when you are a foreign manager like Rafa Benitez, you probably don’t give two hoots about what Sheffield United think.”
The counter-argument from Ferguson was that he should be allowed to pick whoever he wanted without being blamed, in a 38-game season, for another team’s relegation. And that, in short, is the bottom line here, especially when every club is required to submit a 25-man squad at the start of the season.
Palace did the same in their goal-less draw against West Ham last month (Nuno Esperito Santo’s side just weren’t able to take advantage) and it could conceivably happen against Everton on Sunday, too. But the point remains: who can blame Palace for prioritising their European games at this stage of the season and the possibility of a historic trophy?
As for the idea that the Premier League should take action against the relevant clubs, that is largely mooted because it has happened in the past. Wolves were given a suspended £25,000 fine for making 10 changes in a 3-0 defeat at Manchester United in 2009. Blackpool, then a Premier League club, had to pay £25,000 for doing the same in a 3-2 loss against Villa the following year. Both clubs reacted angrily to the sanctions and Blackpool’s manager, Ian Holloway, threatened to resign in protest.
Since then, however, the rules have been changed to allow teams to make extensive changes. And, if you want the evidence why, what happened at Chelsea is a good place to start.
Vitor Pereira, manager of Nottingham Forest, made eight changes to his line-up. He, too, was prioritising the Europa League semi-final at Villa Park on Thursday. Forest hold a 1-0 lead over Villa from the first leg and, when the teams were announced from Stamford Bridge, there must have been supporters of West Ham and Spurs who were delighted to see Pereira gamble that way.
Yet Forest were 2-0 ahead inside the opening quarter of an hour and ran out 3-1 winners. They were quick to the ball, strong in the tackle and decisive in their passing — everything, in fact, that Villa had not been the previous day.
For that, it was easy to understand why so many Villa fans were leading the outrage, particularly as they have to pay some of the highest ticket prices in English football. A lot of supporters walked out in disgust. Others made their feelings clear and it was strange, in the extreme, to see Emery looking so indifferent to his team’s shortcomings. Usually such an animated presence on the touchline, Emery watched like a statue while his players sleepwalked through the game.
The upside for Villa of losing to Spurs was that it put extra pressure on Forest, with their own relegation worries, not to rest players at Stamford Bridge. Villa already had an extra day’s recovery. That additional day, every sports scientist will confirm, can be crucial. So it could, in theory, have handed Emery’s team a considerable physical advantage for the second leg.
As it was, it didn’t change Pereira’s plans. The difference was that Forest’s back-up players gave everything they had at Chelsea, whereas Villa’s surrender against Spurs was completely out of keeping with how they have previously played this season.
It was some response from Pereira’s team, who are virtually safe from relegation now. Forest play Bournemouth on the last day of the season. And Bournemouth, of course, are the club chasing down Villa for Champions League qualification. There is some irony, in other words, that Emery & Co, having lost a lot of admirers over the weekend, might end up relying on Forest to go full-strength.