Matt Maher analysis: Aston Villa look in need of a rest after an exhausting week

It is undoubtedly a sign of how far Villa have come that a draw against the team who have beaten them more times than any other in the Premier League felt so thoroughly underwhelming.

Perhaps it was also evidence of how far they have to go. The elite teams to which Emery and Villa aspire, the likes of Arsenal and Manchester City, are long used to delivering on the big occasion twice or even thrice a week.

For Villa it is still a new experience. True, they had rather a good record last season in Premier League matches which immediately followed Europa Conference League Thursday nights.

But few, if any, of their games in Europe last term were so physically or mentally draining as Wednesday night against Bayern. The seventh match in 22 days for Emery’s team felt one too many. The trouble is they will face precisely the same schedule on the other side of the international break.

This was what Emery had warned about when he said he would be working harder in advance of United’s visit than he did Bayern’s. Yet whatever the manager had done in the days between the matches, it didn’t work.

It wasn’t just Villa’s players who seemed a little lethargic. On a day the grey sky matched the poor fare on the pitch, the loudest noise from home supporters in the first half was when the Holte End decided to cruelly mock the appearance of United skipper Bruno Fernandes. From the first whistle to the last, there was precious little else to get excited about.

United, who arrived on a four-match winless run, escaped relatively easily with the point you suspected their under-fire head coach, Erik ten Hag, had come for.

Villa’s cause was not helped by a continually lengthening injury list. Emery, already forced to make two changes to his team due to the absence of Amadou Onana and Jacob Ramsey, then watched Ezri Konsa limp off before the clock had his 12 minutes with a suspected hamstring problem.

If confirmed, Konsa would be the fourth Villa player this season to injure that muscle. The centre-back is already the seventh player in Emery’s team to be facing time out in a campaign which is only 10 matches old.

Emery, never the type to make excuses, later dismissed any major concerns over the frequency of such problems, pointing out Villa’s players are rarely ruled out for the long-term.

That may be so, yet the chopping and changing is disruptive. At least one member of yesterday’s playing XI, Leon Bailey, is playing through the pain barrier, while Matty Cash was brought straight back into the team after recovering from his own hamstring strain. Emery’s use of only three substitutions through the course of the 90 minutes indicated his lack of options.

For Villa injuries are not a new issue. Last season’s fourth-placed finish was achieved last season despite chronic injury concerns. Since the start of last term, soft tissue injuries have been almost as common for Emery’s team as winning. With this campaign set to be the busiest yet, you fear for their long-term prospects should such poor luck continue.

Even taking the absentees into account, you felt Villa would have enough to get past what must surely be the poorest United team since the 1980s.

Yet on a day when it would likely have needed just one of their attacking stars to be on form, they were all off-key to varying degrees.

Ollie Watkins could not get into the game in the first half and then didn’t a sniff at goal in the second, while even Jhon Duran failed to sparkle when things looked set up perfectly for another super-sub performance. The Colombia international sent one attempted cross behind for a goal-kick.

The most frustrated of Villa’s forwards, meanwhile, was Morgan Rogers. From the first five minutes it was clear the 22-year-old would be given ample opportunities to exploit space in front of the visiting back four but he made nowhere near enough use of it, frequently picking the wrong option or running into trouble. Rogers has enjoyed an excellent start to the season but this was a reminder that, just like Villa as a whole, he still has much work to do. The biggest positive for Emery, seven days on from a slightly fortunate 2-2 draw at Ipswich, was a first Premier League clean sheet of the season. Diego Carlos and Pau Torres, both of whom had enjoyed underwhelming starts to the campaign, have suddenly come alive against both Bayern and now United. Taking Konsa’s injury into account, that can only be encouraging.

United could claim to have had more meaningful efforts on goal, Marcus Rashford twice testing Emi Martinez, his second effort forcing Villa’s goalkeeper into a fine one-handed save. Fernandes almost shut the teasing crowd up with a free-kick which thundered against the bar, Antony then sending the rebound wide of an empty net from the edge of the box.

Yet at no point did the visitors, who have scored just five goals in their first seven league matches, cut the hosts open.

Villa rarely threatened to do so themselves and their best move of the match came in stoppage time. Jaden Philogene arrived to meet Rogers’ cross at the far post, looking certain to score, only to see his shot cannon off Diogo Dalot and behind. The winner, in truth, would have been undeserved. For Villa, this felt neither a good point, or a bad point. It was just a point.