After working so hard to put survival back in their own hands, Burnley succumbed to Aston Villa. The optimism garnered from Mike Jackson’s first four games in temporary charge evaporated at Turf Moor thanks to goals from Danny Ings, Emi Buendía and Ollie Watkins to leave the hosts looking over their shoulder with great concern.
Jackson will face a challenge to lift his players after such a dispiriting loss. His only fit strikers have two goals between them in the Premier League this season and his first-choice centre-back pairing are injured going into their final three games.
“I said to them before the Watford game if I was going to take a group into this, it’d be them,” Jackson said. “My thoughts haven’t changed.” With Leeds and Everton playing on Sunday, Burnley could be back in the one available relegation spot by the end of the weekend.
“If you would have said we were going to take 10 points from five games you would have said ‘right, we’ll take that’, everyone in this room would have taken it. Things change very quickly in football; I’ve been here long enough to know that from one defeat the sky has fallen in, to the next minute everyone is the king. We know what we need to do.”
Burnley were given a warning of Ings’ ability to run in behind in the third minute when he got beyond the defence to latch on to a long pass over the top, only to curl his shot wide. There was no mistake at the second time of asking when Buendía, who replaced Philippe Coutinho in the team, saw the former Burnley striker find space and measured his pass perfectly for Ings to run on to and calmly slot the ball into the corner from 12 yards. There was a muted celebration from Ings on his return to Turf Moor where he spent four years earlier in his career.
Burnley were punished for their attacking flaws when an overlapping Lucas Digne, making the most of Dwight McNeil forgetting about his defensive duties, collected a Watkins pass on the overlap, before cutting the ball straight to Buendía who sidefooted his shot towards goal before watching it defeat Nick Pope thanks to a James Tarkowski deflection.
Already missing their captain, Ben Mee, Burnley suffered a further blow when Tarkowski sunk to the turf and was forced off early in the second half. The skipper for the day was replaced by Kevin Long, for only his third appearance of the season.
It did not take long for Villa to capitalise on Long’s introduction. John McGinn found space on the left and flashed a dangerous cross into the box for Watkins who had found space between the unfortunate Long and Charlie Taylor, allowing him to head through Pope’s legs to end the game as a contest.
At three goals down, left-back Erik Pieters was brought on to replace the ineffective Barnes, a sign of the limited squad depth available to Jackson.
The caretaker must have looked over aghast when Steven Gerrard brought on Coutinho, who the manager wants to keep at the club for the long term, for the final 10 minutes, which included a Maxwel Cornet consolation.
“I put it on them before the game, I said we’ve got a lot of people in the team that are going to fight and scrap and do all the dirty work for us but it’s important when our moments come the front three go and win us the game,” Gerrard said.
“And they were ruthless and it shows again Danny and Ollie can be a really good threat together and I thought the service from little Emi was outstanding.”
