Dave Woodhall watched Villa finally hit form at home.
Due to a combination of circumstances I’ve not been writing for a couple of weeks and in that time Villa had looked worryingly as though they could slip towards relegation trouble. At least four points could have been expected against a Cardiff side who look doomed and Newcastle where there’s always the chance of a drama turning into a crisis. Instead there was a turgid goalless draw and a stoppage time defeat, which led to the mutterings of protest growing louder and made the Sunday’s home game with Norwich a lot more important than it should have been.
It took three minutes for the inevitable to happen, when Wes Hoolahan scored for Norwich, following the equally inevitable carving open of the Villa defence by two or three slick passes. Hoolahan for some reason chose not to celebrate his goal, probably because scoring at Villa Park isn’t all that difficult. And then, for a quarter of an hour Villa decided to play. Christian Benteke scored two, one of which was as fine a target man’s goal as you’ll ever see. Leandro Bacuna finished off a slick move with a well-taken strike and another good move led to an own goal for the fourth.
The second half was less dramatic and there were some comments that Villa should have gone for a bigger win but at 4-1 up, in appalling weather on a slippery pitch, why risk injuries? Norwich’s players spent the last 45 minutes just wishing the game would be over as soon as possible and their manager Chris Hughton as good as admitted that damage limitation was uppermost in his thoughts at half time. My only complaint was that the game had been shifted for TV. Why anyone would want to spend their Sunday afternoon watching Villa v Norwich if they didn’t have to is beyond me.
The win takes Villa up to eleventh in the table and showed that they’re good enough to stay there. Whether they’ll be able to following this promising display up with a decent run is more open to debate. Since Paul Lambert arrived we’ve seen glimpses that there’s potentially a good side in there but they’ve been let down by inconsistency. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that our best home performances this season have been against Manchester City, Albion and this one; in all three we went a goal behind and had to attack. When we attack we look a decent team but too often this season Villa have been negative. Now, with the pressure all but off there’s the opportunity for the team to go out and play.
On a more mundane note, Mat Kendrick struck a chord in the Mail last week with a call for Villa fans to get more pro-active. As he put it, the club have always been open to reasoned approaches from supporters and the oldest-established group still in existence are the Supporters Trust, who could always do with new members and can be contacted at www.villatrust.org.uk