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By NATHAN SALT - FOOTBALL REPORTER Published: 06: 29 AEDT, 24 October 2025 | Updated: 06: 50 AEDT, 24 October 2025 37 View comments By UEFA's reckoning, the Dutch Eredivisie is the sixth best league in European football. By the Eredivisie's reckoning so far this season, Go Ahead Eagles are its 12th best team. So dress this up however you want, an unfortunate blip, an inevitable run buster after five straight wins, a banana skin, they happen, it's no big deal, take your pick. All are categorically wrong on this occasion. What Villa produced in the second half in this outpost 90 minutes from Amsterdam was nothing short of dreadful. This was a perfect case study of finding a way to lose. Unai Emery was always bound to make changes with Manchester City up next in the league on Sunday and so to see seven in total didn't exactly sound the alarm, even if Harvey Elliott, who once again bizarrely went unused on the night, was a notable omission. It was a starting XI totalling a value of more than £250million in fees, not including the loan fee or exorbitant wage coverage Villa are committed to for Jadon Sancho. By contrast, Go Ahead Eagles had a revenue of just £18. 1m last season. David versus Goliath in all its glory. For 41 minutes that huge gulf was obvious as Villa toyed with a team with just three wins from 12 this season. A team that, in all honesty, looked in a different realm to Villa. Emi Buendia (left) missed a penalty as Aston Villa only had themselves to blame in a 2-1 loss Go Ahead Eagles are the 12th-best team in the Netherlands now and Villa were complacent Four minutes in Evann Guessand scored after Sancho's cross was hastily cleared into his path. Emi Martinez - £17m Victor Lindelof - Free Tyrone Mings - £20m Pau Torres - £35m Ian Maatsen - £37. 5m Lamare Bogarde - £130, 000 Amadou Onana - £50m Evann Guessand - £30m Emi Buendia - £33m Jadon Sancho - Loan Ollie Watkins - £28m TOTAL: £250, 630, 000 Villa would continue to dominate, camping themselves in the Eagles half, and rattled off five more shots on target before the break with Ollie Watkins, a dismal display all round and an increasingly awkward conversation to have in a World Cup cycle, wasting one golden opportunity. This was easy for Villa. Too easy was the problem. Then complacency kicked in. Five wins in a row, feeling themselves, punching down on a team comfortably below their level, Villa only have themselves to blame for the debacle that followed. Nineteen passes Go Ahead Eagles made in the Villa half in the opening 45 minutes. They had an Expected Goals (x G) from open play of 0. 02. And yet at half-time they were level through a set-piece, an Achilles heel of Villa that any scout could have foreseen given four of their eight goals shipped in the Premier League have come from them. Then a simple long ball, Ian Maatsen, who has been champing at the bit to play, fell asleep, Pau Torres didn't do much better, and it was in. The Eagles would only touch the ball two more times in the Villa box all game and, thanks to Emi Buendia's woeful skied penalty late on, still won. Villa can win the Europa League and are the bookmakers' favourites for a reason. But this was a stark reminder that arrogance, complacency, how ever you choose to dress that pathetic second half up, will get them nowhere.
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