Villa win at Brighton as Dave Woodhall begins to imagine.
This April might prove the most important one since 1981. When it ends the Villa could be, well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. And it started off perfectly. We’ve got a decent record at Brighton but against that this match came three days after an FA Cup quarter-final and with the rest of the night’s fixtures looking as one-sided as an Eddie Hearn promotion (one for the boxing fans out there) the pressure was on for the team to deliver. It was one of those nights where you’d kid yourself a draw would be okay although a defeat would make the top five highly unlikely.
There were the usual expected couple of changes, with Tyrone Mings rested and John McGinn coming in for Marco Asensio. Sometimes you write things like that and have to stop to realise that it’s not a dream. Looking at the Villa bench and thinking what it was like even a few months ago is, to put it mildly, a bit mind-blowing.
And so the game began, less a dream and more a team who 
were exuding the confidence that comes from knowing they’re the best on the pitch. As has often been the case there weren’t a great deal of chances in the first half but then again we seem to have got rid of the tendency to let in early goals.
Pity the ref hasn’t got rid of the tendency to make diabolical decisions, as we saw when Jacob Ramsey was brought down in the box without a penalty being given, but when Brighton hit the post from a free-kick he wasn’t penalised for handball, which in no way made up.
With the game goalless at half-time you knew that if it remained that way for long a world-class player or two would be brought on. They weren’t needed, at least not at first, because five minutes after the break a long ball from Morgan Rogers let in Marcus Rashford, who ran on and finished with the calmness expected of such a striker, seconds after Brighton were taking a corner. We used to let in goals like that.
The home side had a goal disallowed for handball, which their players didn’t seem too upset about, then surprisingly three players came on after 65 minutes, including Asensio. It’s bordering on cruelty to have that happen, although it did take thirteen minutes for him to have an effect. Rogers, again, took the ball out wide, Ollie Watkins either fell over or did it deliberately, and Asensio hit the square ball past Watkins and the keeper. VAR looked at that one as well, but for what your guess is as good as mine.
A result of all these VAR checks was an unfeasibly large amount of stoppage time and in the eleventh minute of it McGinn drove forward, Asensio moved the ball on and Donyell Malen got his first Villa goal. Three points, another clean sheet, a decent boost to the goal difference and the only disappointment was that most of the other results went as expected.
Not that it matters all that much because the night’s entertainment provided more evidence that when they’re on form this Villa team is a match for any in the world. We haven’t been able to say that for forty-odd years, either.
