Vengeance isn’t easy to come by in football and it’s just as well, because sometimes teams need to focus on themselves before embarking on some spurious quest for sporting revenge, the most nebulous revenge of all.
Aston Villa play away at Brentford on Tuesday for the second time in four matches, having lost to the Bees in the Premier League in August.
Talk of Villa getting their own back is all well and good but the horrible truth is they have their own problems to deal with and have shown precious little sign of being able to do so.
In a sense, this was the perfect draw for Villa in the third round of the Carabao Cup.
Although it was yet another example of Villa getting paired with Premier League opponents while other clubs get a more favourable draw on paper, Villa need a massive kick in the pants and returning so quickly to the site of a league defeat is a big opportunity to put things right.
It should also guard against complacency but if there’s anyone complacent in this Villa squad at the moment they need professional medical attention.
What should have been a distraction, a throwaway, the earliest knockings of a distant cup hope for the season, has taken on an air of importance it doesn’t deserve because Villa need to a win, a performance and some goals simply to lighten the mood.
He wouldn’t have played in this game anyway but Villa have lost Youri Tielemans to an injury sustained in Saturday’s draw at Everton.
Tielemans joins fellow central midfielders Amadou Onana and Boubacar Kamara in the treatment room as injuries really begin to bite in the middle of the pitch.
Ross Barkley is absent due to a personal issue until he’s not, leaving manager Unai Emery with a challenging team selection irrespective of the relative focus on the match.
Andrés García is still out as far as we know, limiting Emery’s options at right-back too, but the manager has Victor Lindelöf on hand along with fellow deadline day signings Jadon Sancho and Harvey Elliott.
The starting eleven for this game is anyone’s guess. Emery has surprised us before, not least on Saturday, but I think he’ll be motivated by both mixing it up to take the sting out of the season for certain players and trying out a few of his alternative options.
For that reason, I expect to see extensive changes for Tuesday’s game. Essentially, I think it’ll be in Emery’s mind to change as many players as possible within the parameters of doing so strategically. His lens might be partnerships and proving grounds more than result and performance.
Villa would like to win silverware but make no mistake, this is the runt of the litter and the need for focus has become ever clearer in the early part of the season.
Tuesday has become about Sunday. Brentford has become about Sunderland. Emery has been presented with a chance to test out the answers to some questions away from the Premier League and I think he’ll grab that chance with both hands.
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