Villa beat Celtic in the Champions League and Dave Woodhall is delighted.
150 years encapsulated in ninety minutes. One of these days Villa will do what they set out to do calmly, without any drama, straightforward. Or maybe not.
The match had been talked about for weeks but the build-up seemed a bit lower-key than the previous Champions League games. Maybe we’re getting used to it. For some reason the Big Flag featured Ozzy Osbourne, making his first-ever appearance at Villa Park, and the anthem sounded as impressive as ever but the noise levels appeared down.
Villa had Lamont Bogarde replacing Tyrone Mings and Ollie Watkins starting again for the latest chapter in the club’s links with Scotland. And straight from the off the difference in the two teams was apparent. It took less than three minutes for a few quick passes to open up the Celtic defence with Jacob Ramsey squaring for Morgan Rogers to give Villa the lead. Barely ninety seconds later Villa won the ball in midfield and Ollie Watkins laid it off for Rogers to hit his second from the edge of the area.
That should have been the start of the sort of scoreline that makes the rest of football take notice. Ramsey almost got a third when his shot hit the post, then the keeper and bounced out while Watkins should have got another when his chance was cleared off the line after he tried to place it instead of slamming the ball into the net.
Then for the second game in a row an injury caused Villa problems, Matty Cash going off after half an hour and John McGinn replacing him, with a few players shuffling around. Boubacar Kamara playing in the centre of defence meant Villa had lost his bite in midfield as well as the momentum they’d built up.
One defensive mistake was bad enough, another meant that Celtic had somehow levelled and it was time to start looking anxiously at the other scores from around Europe. To their credit Villa came out for the second half looking much sharper and were soon dominant again. AFter an hour McGinn powered forward, Ramsey laid the ball once more and Watkins made up for his earlier miss.
Then came a few minutes that Watkins might choose to forget, with a couple of misses either side of what at first looked the worst penalty of all time but was later shown to be an unfortunate slip just as he was about to make contact with the ball. Villa were totally in control. although this is Villa we’re talking about and “totally in control” is a misnomer at the best of times. Fortunately, and I know Scottish football has become a bit of a joke, but Celtic were one of the poorest teams we’ve seen all season. Villa had been different quality for all but ten minutes and in stoppage time Rogers made sure when a defensive cock-up let in Watkins, who laid the ball off for the hat-trick.
Then came confirmation that we’d finished in the top eight and would avoid a play-off. When we qualified I thought that getting to the knockout stages would be a decent achievement given that it’s our first time in this format. We’ve done that and more, and you have to wonder how much further we can go.