Villa’s vital win at Bournemouth has Dave Woodhall smiling.
One of the few advantages to a 5.30 kick-off is that if you’re going into the last few games of the season with something to play for, you can see what your rivals have done earlier and adjust your gameplan accordingly.
When Villa kicked off at Bournemouth we knew that Manchester City had dropped two surprising points and a win would put them firmly in our sights. Whether this did make Unai change his ideas about how to approach the task in hand we’ll never know; it probably did, because El Maestro gives every impression that he’d alter things round if a player blinked n the sunlight too often.
There was a bit of a surprise when Tyrone Mings started, with John McGinn dropped for Jacob Ramsey, but at this stage of the season being able to rotate the line-up is of vital importance and despite Villa’s recent return to normality where injuries are concerned we still have enough strength to rest a couple of players.
And whatever plans Unai had, they seemed to be working as Marco Asensio, perhaps a bit lucky to be starting after a few unremarkable recent performances, hit the post early on. Boubacar Kamara could perhaps have done better with a header which was saved and the resultant clearance fell to the head of Matty Cash, who brought out another good save from the Bournemouth keeper.
Then deep into stoppage time at the end of a first half Villa had dominated, Matty Cash won the ball, Morgan Rogers picked it up and played through to Ollie Watkins, whose slight touch beat the keeper to make him Villa’s record Premier league scorer.
Kamara hit a shot just wide early in the second half but there was nothing much else happening, with Villa seeming to be able to stop every possible danger from the home side until the afternoon’s next drama came with ten minutes remaining.
Jacob Ramsey got into a bit of a tangle with his opponent. There was barely a contact made, much less a foul but the ref, for some reason, thought it worth a booking and with Ramsey already having had a yellow card in the first half Villa were down to ten men for the rest of the match.
Suddenly Bournemouth had a boost and Emiliano Martinez had to do well to keep out a swerving shot before making another miracle save right at the end, with the rebound somehow cleared from under the bar by Cash. In the last minute of the first half it was his tackle that set up Villa’s goal, in the last minute of the match his defending saved an equaliser.
Apart from that there was a good claim for our oft-maligned right-back to be named man of the match. He’s not the only Villa player to seem to have reached his limit under Emery only to find a bit more when it’s been needed.
We’ve now qualified for Europe three seasons in a row and if you don’t count the Intertoto this is the first time one manager’s done that. There’s a couple of important matches on Sunday but Villa are in form and have got over last month’s stumble. The final two games of the season promise much.
