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Richard Keys wasn’t best pleased by what was served up by Aston Villa and Manchester United on Sunday.
Both teams went into the match with different types of pressures on their shoulders, with Aston Villa beating Bayern Munich in the Champions League in midweek and Erik ten Hag’s future under question.
The game finished goalless, and in truth, both teams couldn’t argue because their performance wasn’t much to shout about as they created very little.
Keys claimed that he ‘can’t recall’ watching a worse Premier League fixture than the one Aston Villa and Manchester United served up.
One of his issues was the lack of pressing from both teams – they were both in Europe in midweek – and how that slowed the game down.
Perhaps the game needed a spark, such as a wonder goal, a lucky goal or a goal out of nowhere just to change the course of the match.
Or, from Villa’s perspective, for the on-field referee to do his job and send an opposition player off if he has committed enough offences.
That’s another talking point that left Keys frustrated and he stated that Marcus Rashford was a very lucky boy on the day.
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Just after the hour mark, ten Hag subbed off his struggling forward whilst he was on a yellow card and had, just moments ago, fouled Jaden Philogene Bidace in the most blatant of fashions.
As you can imagine, there were cries from the Villa Park faithful for Rashford to get sent off, but instead, he was let off the hook, and then subbed by his manager.
Keys stated that Rashford should have been off the field and labelled the player as ‘petulant’, as he wrote in his personal blog.
Should Marcus Rashford have been sent off for Manchester United against Aston Villa?
“I’m not kidding, I can’t recall watching a worse PL game than Villa v United,” stated Keys. “It was awful. Coaches are going to have the game done away with if they keep serving up rubbish like we saw at Villa Park.
“Newcastle/City was bad enough for 45 minutes the week before, but the pain went on from start to finish at Villa. At one point I thought I was watching walking football. Dreary doesn’t cover it – Clearly Villa were feeling the effects of their big night against Bayern, but that’s not really an excuse. If they want to mix it with the big boys they’ve got to do better, especially when there’s nothing to beat in front of you.
“In his column in the Telegraph today the former head of the PGMOL – Keith Hackett – writes that we saw ‘a number of strange decisions this weekend’. That’s an understatement, Keith. Rashford should’ve gone for two yellows at Villa. He was petulant when he lashed out at Leon Bailey and deserved a second yellow.”
Aston Villa need to be more boring
One of the positives to come out of the weekend game was the fact that Villa kept their first clean sheet of the Premier League season.
From an entertainment perspective, Emery’s side will always provide that, with the high line and the number of players they commit forward.
But, sometimes, it comes at a cost, such as being far too entertaining and not keeping enough clean sheets.
Perhaps Villa being a little bit more boring is a good thing going forward because it means more clean sheets.
Villa are over the moon at being in the Champions League, but if they want to continue that, then they need to sort out the defence.