I watched Aston Villa repeat the same unforgivable mistake three times against Liverpool

Unai Emery’s men were competitive and spirited at Anfield and were unlucky not to be awarded a penalty or two – referee David Coote twice waved away appeals that could have changed the complexion of the tie – but they were defeated through their own blunders on Saturday night.

Villa would have had every chance of a decent result away at the Premier League leaders if it was not for uncharacteristic naivety from set pieces. The Villans thrice attempted a flawed corner routine at Anfield, the first of which led to Darwin Nunez’s crucial opening goal.

It did not matter which side Lucas Digne or Youri Tielemans were swinging in their crosses from, they would be aimed for the near post where Pau Torres was waiting to nod the ball back into the danger area. Except none of the attempts worked out as Villa or set-piece specialist Austin MacPhee would have hoped, as Liverpool read the situations superbly.

That is exactly what happened for Nunez’s goal as Virgil van Dijk cleared forward to Mohamed Salah, who was challenged by the last man - Leon Bailey - before the ball made its way through to Nunez to round Emi Martinez and find the net. Villa, with just one player back, over-committed for their corner and paid the price.

You would think Emery and his men would have learned their lesson from that, but they certainly did not as I watched MacPhee signal for the same routine on three of Villa’s nine corners. Liverpool were laughing as they knew they could sprint away on the counter-attack every single time.

Nunez nearly had a second goal in the first half from a near-carbon copy situation to his first before Salah put the game beyond doubt late on. Villa’s last man back on that occasion was at least the defensively-minded Diego Carlos but even he screwed up, heading straight into Salah’s path and allowing the Egyptian to sprint through.

Reds boss Arne Slot admitted post-match that he had spotted Villa’s set-piece pattern quickly. The Dutchman allowed his players to improvise to their hearts’ content on the transition, knowing their talent would shine through and make the difference.

“It was nothing to do with what we do on the training ground,” Slot admitted. “It’s just pure quality and purely what the players come up with in these transition moments. For us, it’s about preventing other teams from scoring but for the ones who have been here a long time, it’s happened before.”

MacPhee generally deserves a lot of credit for his clever set-piece ideas but him and Emery not accepting failure before it was too late ultimately cost Villa at Anfield, as they suffered their fourth straight defeat in all competitions. It is still early days in the season, though, and there will be plenty of opportunities to bounce back.