Villa’s season ends with a win at Manchester City that leaves Dave Woodhall jubilant.
You can pretty much guarantee two things on the last day of the season – the weather’s good and there are some unexpected results. The weather was certainly glorious on Sunday afternoon, even in Manchester, although the odds against a surprise result lengthened when the teams were announced.
It wasn’t exactly a case of get here early and you’ll get a game, but Unai had warned that finding enough fit bodies might be difficult and subsequently there were eight changes from the side that wrote itself into history in Istanbul.
This, though, was just a sideshow to the media overkill surrounding Pep Guardiola and a couple of his players. The script was written, the stage set – Villa would turn up, go through the motions and allow Guardiola his final victory. Anything else just wouldn’t be right.
23 minutes in and to no-one’s real surprise City took the lead thanks to some poor defensive work at a corner, So far, so expected. Villa weren’t showing much and in truth, not many of the away support were all that bothered, It had, after all, been a long week and Marco Bizot had to make another couple of good saves to keep Villa in the game.
Matty Cash came on at the start of the second half, his first touch won Villa a corner and two touches later Ollie Watkins equalised with his twentieth goal of the season.
We then had a ludicrously-staged substitution, with the Villa players taking part for some reason, and no sooner had that concluded than a typically wonderful, flowing end to end move ended with Watkins getting another. The ref did his best to help the afternoon but fortunately VAR has no sense of occasion and Villa were in the lead.
Leon Bailey hit the post, City got a late equaliser which was ruled out, their supporters got very angry because rules don’t apply in Manchester and there was another bit of dramatic substitution. In between all this melodrama the match finished and Villa had ended up with an unlikely but well-deserved three points. That saw us ending in fourth place, which considering the summer’s transfer dealings and poor start to the season wasn’t so much a surprise as a miracle.
And what a season it was; perhaps the best in terms of all-round achievement since winning the league in 1981. After that first month we had scintillating football, incredible results, unforgettable occasions and a run of injuries that prevented us from finishing even higher. There was the occasional wobble and at times Unai came in for a bit of criticism, although anyone saying a bad word about him should remember that he knows what he’s doing far more than any of us could even imagine.
Which leads me to the final question – for everything he’s done at Manchester City, albeit with unlimited funds and the assistance of compliant authorities, could Guardiola have achieved anything like what Unai has managed at Villa? And could Unai have equalled the tainted achievements of Pep Guardiola at the Etihad? The answer to those questions is no surprise at all.
