Aston Villa squandered a chance to move into the Premier League's top seven as they couldn't find a way past Burnley at Villa Park.

Dean Smith's side were held to a goalless stalemate despite registering a whopping 27 shots throughout the 90 minutes, and even hit the woodwork twice.

Ahmed Elmohamady had an attempt cleared off the line by former Villan Matt Lowton before Nick Pope's heroics saw the England shot-stopper tip a shot from Anwar El Ghazi onto the crossbar.

Despite not picking up the victory, the Midlands outfit recorded a sixth clean sheet of the season, more than any other top-flight team.

Ollie Watkins was one home player that found the game difficult as he was largely anonymous and wasteful in what chances he did have.

Per SofaScore, the 24-year-old won just three of 18 duels (16%), failed to score from four attempts on goal, and lost possession 14 times.

For large spells the visiting partnership of James Tarkowski and Ben Mee kept the £33m summer signing at bay, even with Jack Grealish sitting behind him in the no.10 role for the first time this season.

Watkins also made just eight passes all match at an accuracy rate of 64%, which was fewer than goalkeeper Emi Martinez, which only goes to show how little of an impact he had at the other end of the pitch.

His performance was summed up by the five out of ten rating handed to him by BirminghamLive in their post-match review. They said:

"Spurned a few chances early on, and didn't seem completely on his game. Worked tremendously hard to find a Villa opener, but seemingly lacked the clinical striking ability that has defined his best performances in a Villa shirt."

It's now four straight matches in which Watkins has failed to score and at Villa Park on Thursday night, the £75k-per-week frontman clearly let Smith down badly with a shocking performance.

AND in other news, Lange handed big boost in AVFC hunt for £16.2m-rated star, he "makes scoring look easy"...