Last Sunday, Aston Villa put to bed any doubts about the team's away form in the Premier League by earning a massive 2-1 victory at Tottenham Hotspur to leap into the top four. However, this afternoon, those concerns reared their ugly head once more.
The Villans only managed to pick up one point against 16th-place Bournemouth, with a 90th-minute equaliser from Ollie Watkins rescuing the side from a dismal day on the south coast.
It certainly wasn't a vintage display by Villa under Unai Emery at the Vitality Stadium and several players struggled throughout the match, including one man in particular who took the cake.
Aston Villa's game in numbers
Aston Villa dominated possession in the game, boasting 63% of the ball to the home team's 37% but Emery's side struggled to create many opportunities.
The Midlands club ended the match with 11 shots at goal, recording an xG of just 0.88, according to FotMob. This is an average of 0.08 xG per shot which is quite low. Despite scoring, Watkins had an xG of merely 0.24, showing how poor Villa's chance creation was on the night.
On the flip side, the Cherries registered an xG of 2.11 from 15 shots which comes to an average of 0.14 xG per shot. Bournemouth had a higher quality and volume of chances than the visitors so perhaps a 2-2 draw was a decent result on the balance of play, with Dominic Solanke alone garnering an xG of 1.47, six times more than Watkins.
Furthermore, Villa accumulated nine key passes during the game to the opposition's 13 despite having the lion's share of possession, while only 146 of the away side's 463 passes were in the final third, with more coming in their own defensive third, as per WhoScored.
Despite the team's poor showing statistically, a mistake from one player cost Villa the points during what was ultimately a highly entertaining game.
Diego Carlos' game in numbers
Two minutes after Leon Bailey levelled the game midway through the first half for Aston Villa, Diego Carlos placed a shot past the Bournemouth goalkeeper to take the lead. Unfortunately, the goal was chalked off after a VAR review.
The most disappointed man in the ground will certainly have been the centre-back who missed his shot at redemption after his careless pass landed straight to the feet of Ryan Christie to slip in Antonio Semenyo for the opening goal of the game.
Not only was Carlos at fault for Bournemouth's first goal but he also ranked pretty dismally in Birmingham Live's player ratings, being handed a 6/10. The Athletic's Aston Villa writer Jacob Tanswell called Carlos "sloppy" during the game.
Having signed for the club back in 2022 for a whopping £26m, the 30-year-old earned his fifth Premier League start of the campaign by playing alongside Pau Torres in the heart of the defence. Central defender Ezri Konsa was utilised as a right-back once more, an experiment Emery has grown to favour in recent weeks.
Unfortunately, this trial failed to launch at the Vitality. Carlos lost possession of the ball 12 times through the match, with one leading to a Bournemouth goal. Additionally, he lost 50% of his aerial duels and failed to win a single tackle during the game, while also attempting ten long balls and completing merely four.
Konsa, on the other hand, remarkably won 100% of his 15 total duels against the Cherries, which was more than any other player on the pitch, and also made four ball recoveries before being replaced by Matty Cash with a quarter of an hour remaining.
Perhaps Emery needed this game to see that Konsa is better suited alongside Torres at the back, with Cash returning to the starting lineup on the right.