Dean Smith was left baffled by Aston Villa’s failure to beat Burnley on Thursday night, telling the club’s official website that Anwar El Ghazi, in particular, should have made the breakthrough.
That 7-2 thrashing of Liverpool is now over two months ago and, strangely enough, the Midland side have failed to win a single one of their four home games since that famous October night.
After losing to Leeds, Southampton and Brighton, Aston Villa were then held to a 0-0 draw by a Burnley side who hung onto a point by their fingernails in midweek.
If everything Villa touched turned to gold (or should that be goals) when Liverpool came to town, that Midas Touch deserted them against Sean Dyche’s Clarets.
The hosts mustered 27 shots but failed to find the back of the net, with Nick Pope, James Tarkowski and Matt Lowton all producing heroic blocks.
El Ghazi came closer than anyone as his thunderbolt free-kick was tipped onto the bar by Pope. But the former Ajax man was also wasteful on a number of other occasions, firing straight at Burnley shot-stopper when well placed in the second half.
“My only concern was that we didn’t work the goalkeeper enough. There was some great movement to get us into those positions,” Smith said at full-time.
“To get a performance like that, I can’t be disappointed. I’m disappointed with the result – the players are too because we had enough chances to win two or three games.”
“Anwar, with his technique, would expect himself to score two or three of the chances he had.
“I wasn’t worried about previous results here; I just wanted my players to keep putting in good performances because that’s what leads to results.”
After scoring a stoppage-time winner at Wolves on Saturday, El Ghazi was certainly full of confidence against Burnley, causing the visiting defence no end of problems on his first start of the season.
But, despite producing the most shots of anyone on the pitch (8), he failed to beat Pope even once.
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