Aston Villa need a ‘miracle’ to qualify for Champions League, says Gary Neville

Gary Neville was critical of Unai Emery’s tactics (Photo by James Baylis – AMA/Getty Images)

Aston Villa need a ‘miracle’ to qualify for the Champions League and will ‘fade away’ as the season progresses.

That’s according to Gary Neville, who was critical of Unai Emery’s tactics after Villa’s 1-1 draw with Sheffield United.

The Spaniard’s side missed the chance to go clear at the top of the Premier League after a frustrating draw with the Blades on Friday night.

Nicolo Zaniolo scored in the seventh minute of added on time to cancel out Cameron Archer’s opener to leave Villa joint-top of the Premier League.

And Neville, who criticised the ‘formulaic’ tactics of Villa, said it would be a ‘miracle’ if they finished in the top four.

Nicolo Zaniolo scored in the 97th minute (Photo by Marc Atkins/Getty Images)

‘They need to be more inventive and more clever. Do different things. Now teams have seen that tonight – i’m not saying it’s the first time that anyone’s played like that against Villa but there was a lot of respect shown to them tonight – they weren’t good enough to break it down,’ said Neville.

‘It’s something that other teams will look at and they might face it again in the near future. I don’t think Villa were good enough tonight. We watched the game last week between Manchester United and Liverpool, and Liverpool were the better team but they still weren’t good enough in that game. The final pass in the final moment was near enough to their level and Villa have found that out tonight. If you’re not near your level you can lose the game and Villa nearly did tonight.

‘Unai Emery will want to look at how when they play against a deep team how can they be more creative. Douglas Luiz put that ball in at the end and I’d been crying out for more. I thought the passing was a bit basic. Sometimes you just need something that’s a bit electric, that the great players produce. Villa don’t have those great players that I’m referring to but can they be a bit more off-the-cuff and instinctive. It was too formulaic for my liking against a team that was really rigid and well organised.

‘I think they’re a really good team, I think they’re very finely tuned so if a few players got injured they would struggle. If they were to finish fifth it would be an incredible result. If they finished above that it would be an absolute miracle. I think they will fade away and we’ll see them fight for that last Champions League space.’

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