Aston Villa out of League Cup without Dibu Martínez | OneFootball

The Birmingham side drew 1-1 with Brentford and lost in the penalty shootout

The extremely poor start to the season for Aston Villa, who have yet to score a goal or win in the four Premier League matches so far, continued this Tuesday with their elimination from the English League Cup. Without Emiliano “Dibu” Martínez, who was not called up as part of coach Unai Emery’s rotation, they lost 4-2 on penalties to Brentford in the third round of the tournament, after regular time ended 1-1.

After reaching the quarterfinals of the Champions League last season, the start of the new campaign finds the Birmingham side far from that level. They will not be in the most important club tournament in Europe this year, as they qualified for the Europa League due to their position in the last English league, and the world champion goalkeeper with the Argentine national team has only played in one match, the 0-0 draw last Saturday, following his failed move to Manchester United.

Returning to the Gtech Community Stadium, where Aston Villa lost 1-0 to Brentford on August 23 in the second round of the Premier League, they at least found the net for the first time this season, thanks to Harvey Elliott, who recently joined the team. The former Liverpool player, 22, managed to score after a defensive error in the 43rd minute, but Aaron Hickey responded with a fierce volley 12 minutes into the second half to level the match, which ended up needing a tiebreaker.

In the penalty shootout, with no chance of bringing in Dibu as he wasn’t even among the substitutes, the opposing team’s goalkeeper was the star: Hakon Valdimarsson saved shots from John McGinn and Matty Cash, before Danish midfielder Mikkel Damsgaard scored the decisive penalty for a team that was one hundred percent effective in their four attempts.

Emiliano Buendía came on in the second half, when Emery turned to some of the usual starters he had held back, and managed to score in the shootout, but it wasn’t enough.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here.