Villa’s win at home to Brighton leaves Dave Woodhall relieved.
I don’t know what’s the longest-running and most depressing feature of 2026 so far – the rain, or Villa’s spell of injuries. Matty Cash was the latest to be ruled out, with a bruised knee that Unai says should be fixed for our next league game. In his place Lamare Bogarde was in at right-back, where he’s never at his best, with Tyrone Mings in the centre of defence and Pau Torres surprisingly on the bench.
Villa Park under floodlights is a magical place and some great occasions have taken place there. This wasn’t one of them but come the end of the season it could prove to be one of the important ones, not that it seemed like it for most of the evening. Jadon Sancho almost scored at the near post then played the ball through a defender’s legs to provide Morgan Rogers with a chance, but Villa’s early promise soon petered out. James Milner was on the Brighton bench and he was always going to come on and equal the Premier League appearance record, although midway through the first half was probably a lot earlier than he thought it would happen. As expected, he got a decent ovation from Villa supporters, many of whom weren’t born when he was playing for us.
Brighton started off the second half a lot sharper and Emiliano Martinez was at full stretch to get a fingertip to a shot that hit the post. Villa were struggling a bit but Unai did the job by making a few substitutions that improved the team. Amongst them was the first sighting of new Brazilian signing Alysson, who did well enough, and Tammy Watkins, who did what he’ll no doubt be doing a lot of by coming on and running around to stretch a tired defence. There still looked no way that Villa would get the goal they needed and with six minutes remaining Victor Lindelof replaced the clearly tired Douglas Luiz.
At around this time of the year in 2020 Villa were playing Watford in a relegation battle. Towards the end of the game with the scores level there was a clear foul in the box, the penalty wasn’t given and as the ball bounced around it was lashed home by Ezri Konsa although the goal was given to Tyrone Mings after a deflection. Events almost repeated themselves here. Tammy Abraham was pushed over and the ball went out for a corner. Leon Bailey took it, with his delivery met perfectly by Mings although another deflection meant this time it was taken away from him.
Three points and a couple of decent results the night before meant that Villa are still on track for the top four, or wherever we need to qualify for the Champions and Spurs League next season. We’ve got the FA Cup on Saturday and that’s a dilemma for those of us who still harbour nostalgic ideas of winning trophies. Hopefully Cash will be back after that and every week that goes by brings a couple of our wounded heroes closer to a return to the front line.
