Aston Villa saves a point to buy a beleaguered Steven Gerrard much like a lifeline

The pressure is mounting on Steven Gerrard at Aston Villa, but a Leon Bailey goal against Manchester City in the second half bought him some more time?

Five games into the new season, Steven Gerrard's job was hanging by a thread. Aston Villa entered the weekend one place bottom of the Premier League, with just one win. A wave of pressure has been building amid the club's support for some time, and there have been rumors of discontent behind the scenes. And then Manchester City came to town.

Will it even be reasonable this season to judge teams on what they do against Manchester City? If Gerrard were to be called into the meeting room on Monday morning, you can imagine the conversation. “It's not just the last game alone, Steven. I mean, it's really, obviously not about that last game alone.‘

A home game against Manchester City shouldn't really be the barometer by which Steven Gerrard's future with Aston Villa is judged, but those things are never quite fair, are they? It's already gotten to the point where you can only maintain your position by getting results and continuing to do so. If a large enough proportion of supporters have already turned on you, the results should roll in, regardless of the opposition.

But the Manchester City who arrived at Villa Park on this occasion were strangely lethargic for much of this game. They patted the ball around the attacking positions like Blofeld stroking his cat throughout the first half, but despite all that very impressive possession they seemed to have little impetus to get the ball into the penalty area. Villa.

But on this occasion, the Iceman did not come, at least not in the first half. Indeed, Erling Haaland being man-scarred by Tyrone Mings throughout the first half sometimes looked a bit like a battle between Godzilla and Mothra, in which the most likely victim might turn out to be the infrastructure of Villa Park itself.

Haaland, of course, looks anonymous until he suddenly doesn't anymore (that's kind of his thing), and City's best chance of a soporific first half is fell on Kyle Walker, who blazed high and wide when he may or may not have been offside. Their success rate was sensational at half-time. Their goal achievement rate, less.

And perhaps surprisingly, the best chance of the half went to Villa. After 37 minutes of watching Manchester City pass the ball between them, Villa stepped on the ball, moved it forward and saw that City's central defense had taken on the texture of jelly.

Ashley Young, who had been introduced as Matty Cash's replacement 10 minutes earlier when this correspondent was checking his clock to make sure it wasn't 2011 yet, passed the ball to Ollie Watkins, whose the shot was narrowly deflected.

Manchester City called their technical team at half-time, checked the wiring, and within five minutes of the start of the second half normal service had resumed, with Kevin De Bruyne crossing for Goalbot 3000 for score early in the second half. Haaland's goal drought, which had lasted 101 minutes, was finally over. Apparently he just needed to recalibrate his gyroscope.

Of course, within minutes of the goal, the familiar refrain of "you're getting fired tomorrow morning" rang out around Villa Park. It wasn't clear if...