A good video editor could really mess with Aston Villa’s minds after Sunday’s Carabao Cup final. On one hand they could show the two goals Manchester City scored with the aid of slovenly defending and slack officiating, thus intimating that Villa are likely to continue to fall short this season because of a combination of basic mistakes and bad luck.
On the other hand, they could replay Samatta’s excellent diving header, Björn Engels repeatedly throwing himself in front of shots like the world’s most devoted bodyguard or Marvelous Nakamba crunching into Sergio Agüero with the kind of tackle lawmakers are trying to eradicate but from which teammates and fans will always take inspiration (it was more dangerous, yet in a way less objectionable, than the sabotaging little trip on Douglas Luiz for which Rodri was later booked).
These were all moments from which Villa could take heart, the evidence Dean Smith and his players drew on when declaring that the performance against City showed they are improving and not merely because they lost 2-1 to a side who thrashed them 6-1 a month and a half ago.
“It was really hard to beat us, that is how it should be every week,” said Villa’s goalkeeper Orjan Nyland. “[Blocks] are as important as goals really. We did it a lot today so just do it next weekend as well.”
Samatta, too, feels the performance proved Villa are heading in the right direction. “It’s just a matter of time until we catch the pace and we’re going to start winning games,” he said. “The character is there and everybody is believing. There is just something missing but we are going to have it.”
It is natural for a player who was playing his fifth match since joining the club to speak about making gradual steps towards real fluency. But it applies not just to him, the most recent arrival, but to practically the whole team. This season was always going to be a race against time for Villa.
Owing mainly to circumstance, Smith found himself tasked with having to build almost an entirely new side since winning the Championship play-off final; four of the lineup that started that match featured on Sunday. The club made 12 signings last summer and, after a particularly unfortunate spate of injuries, another four in January. None can be dismissed as failures but only one, Tyrone Mings, can be hailed as an unqualified success.
Most of the others, bought relatively cheaply, have shown the potential to thrive in the Premier League but have had games where they were caught out at crucial times – which is no surprise: it would have been extraordinary to see consistency across the board from players challenged to adjust simultaneously to playing with each other for the first time and, in many cases, a new country and new level of football.
Samatta, Nakamba, Engels, Frédéric Guilbert and Douglas Luiz have all shown enough to suggest they could become solid Premier League players for a long time – even Trézéguet and Wesley have had their moments. The problem is they have 11 matches left to make sure they are in the same division next season.
What is more, they have to do that alongside players who have occasionally flourished but have yet to convince that they are at home at this level, as opposed to that cruel limbo-land of players who are too good for the Championship but not quite good enough for the top-flight, such as Anwar El Ghazi, Matt Targett and Conor Hourihane.
Faced with players adapting to different degrees and at different rates, Smith has had to keep thinking on his feet and reassessing supposed progress. Against Leicester next Monday, for instance, should he stick with the back four that did pretty well against City and which he had previously felt compelled to abandon in favour of a back three? Does he select Nyland instead of Pepe Reina, who initially appeared to have brought calmness to the backline after his arrival in January but then contributed to the jitters on show against Southampton in their last league game, when there was no trace of the fight Villa showed on Sunday? Those are judgment calls that the manager needs to get right.
At least, though, there are some certainties for him as he contemplates a difficult run-in: Villa, who have delivered more crosses this season than all but four Premier League teams, have at last, in Samatta, a player who can get on the end of incoming passes; no one has done well enough regularly enough to keep John McGinn out of the team when the Scot soon makes his long-awaited return; and Jack Grealish will not be as inconspicuous again as he was on Sunday.