Analysis: A forgettable match but an important point for Steven Gerrard's Aston Villa

Saturday’s 0-0 draw at Leicester might have been a good advert for cricket but at least Gerrard avoided becoming the second Villa boss this season to suffer five straight Premier League defeats.

That was a sequence which earned predecessor Dean Smith the sack and though Gerrard would not have suffered the same fate, a loss at the King Power would have led to increasing questions about how much progress has been made in his five months at the helm, all just a few days before Smith returns to Villa Park in charge of Norwich.

Instead, the boss was able to fairly frame Villa’s first goal-less draw of the campaign as a step in the right direction, the assertion his team have, at certain stages, not been boring enough carrying a decent slice of truth.

Too often, Villa have emerged from matches like Saturday with nothing due to their habit of gifting their opponents’ goals. February’s home defeat to Watford and losses away at Brentford and Newcastle are just three occasions which quickly spring to mind. Those points do add up when it comes to determining positions among the Premier League’s tightly-matched middle classes. Nobody had drawn few matches than Villa heading into the weekend.

In that respect, Saturday was an improvement. Villa’s improved resilience was typified by the performance of captain Tyrone Mings, who won countless headers in his own box and marshalled the backline to ensure Emi Martinez required little exertion to claim the season’s 10th clean sheet. Other than pushing away a late James Maddison free-kick, the goalkeeper was not forced into a serious save all afternoon.

True, the hosts likely had one eye on Thursday’s Europa Conference League semi-final date with Roma. Yet when Brendan Rodgers introduced Jamie Vardy and Harvey Barnes – a duo who have regularly tormented Villa in the recent past – off the bench late on, the visitors held firm, thanks in some part to an encouraging substitute cameo from teenager Tim Iroegbunam.

Most concerning from Villa’s perspective was their own lack of cutting edge up front. Gerrard’s men have now scored only twice in their last five matches, with only one of those coming from open play.

At the King Power they threatened sporadically, Leon Bailey missing what turned out to be the best chance of the match for either team when he fired Ollie Watkins’ eighth minute cross hurriedly over.

Gerrard later described Bailey’s performance as a step forward and while that was perhaps true, the bar was set low. Other than a second half burst into the Leicester half, during a move which ended with Watkins forcing Kaspar Schmeichel into a save at his near post, it is difficult to recall too many other significant contributions made by the £25million signing from Bayer Leverkusen.

That said, Bailey was much more of an influence on proceedings than Philippe Coutinho, from whom forgettable displays have started to become worryingly common.

In hindsight, those hailing his January loan signing a masterstroke (a group which includes this writer) may have been too hasty. Few players to have worn a Villa shirt possess the brilliance of the Brazilian in full flight.

The trouble is ever since the 4-0 win over Southampton early last month, Coutinho has struggled to get out of second gear. Other than a decent opening half in the loss to Tottenham, his influence in the last five matches has been close to negligible. The question of whether Villa should push ahead with attempts to sign him on a permanent basis feels a lot less straightforward than a few weeks ago. The immediate question for Gerrard is whether he deserves to keep his place in the team. For the second time in three matches, Villa looked a more potent attacking force when Emi Buendia replaced Coutinho off the bench.

After a run of four straight defeats, this was a day when the result was perhaps more important than the performance. Gerrard could later claim to have got elements of both but against Norwich there will be no excuses if his team do not definitively deliver.

Claiming the club’s first top half finish for more than a decade remains a realistic goal but the margin for error is becoming tighter and with two of the remaining six matches against Liverpool and Manchester City, clashes with the Canaries, Crystal Palace and the double-header with Burnley are close to must-win.

At minimum, Villa need to banish the appearance of a team stuck in transition. Saturday stopped the short-term rot and in that respect was acceptable yet, much like the season as a whole, it wasn’t particularly satisfying.