Aston Villa and a kind of progress

Dave Woodhall sees Villa get a dramatic draw at Arsenal.

Those of a certain age will fondly remember the Sports Argus, once as much a part of West Midlands football as Tony Butler’s phone-in and having players not picked for England. Part of the reason why the Argus is no more is kick-off times like this one but in its heyday there was nothing like it for immediate match reaction.

Modern supporters will find it hard to believe that getting a report an hour after the final whistle used to be regarded with awe. Neither will they understand that following a match online will never be as evocative, or as memorable, as standing in a queue at the off-licence to pick up an Argus for your dad and a bag of crisps for yourself with the change.

To get reports done so quickly they had to be written and filed while the game was on,which meant that no matter what happened, most of the coverage was given over to the first half and events later on were described in increasingly less detail. This led to some odd reports when games changed dramatically and if it was still around, the Argus’s account of Villa’s trip to the Emirates would have been bordering on the schizophrenic.

Unsurprisingly, Unai Emery didn’t do much changing to the recently in-form line-up, Ollie Watkins keeping his place and Ian Maatsen in for Lucas Digne. The opposition was a bit different though, and Villa had already ridden their luck before Emiliano Martinez’s instinctive save ten minutes before half-time was ruled to have carried over the line. Then things got worse a couple of minutes later when Amadou Onana went off injured and with our central midfield resources at breaking point, Lamare Bogarde was brought on.

There was no real surprise when Arsenal went two up after 55 minutes and although Martinez maybe should have done a bit better, the main culprit was yet again a full-back allowing a cross to be put over without hindrance.

It might have been the sight of the irritating fjag-wavers (another bit of modern football that should be buried in concrete and dumped into the ocean) but Villa woke up at this point and on the hour Bogarde, who looked increasingly promising as the match wore on, found Lucas Digne, whose cross was met by the unlikely source of a diving header from Youri Tielemans, not exactly renowned for his aerial ability.

Seconds later Tielemans hit the post from the edge of the area and suddenly Villa were in control. Matty Cash made up for his defensive error with a deep cross that was perfectly met by Ollie Watkins, now back on top of his game, and the scores were level.

That was more or less the end of the action, apart from Arsenal having a goal disallowed, hitting the post and Martinez making a couple more world-class saves. Villa’s defence is certainly not good enough at this stage but on a day when they can go two down away to a team looking to win the league and come back to get a draw, the post-mortems can wait. For the moment, enjoy what happened and relive the moments by watching Arsenal TV. It might not be as good as the Argus, but it’s a lot funnier.