VILLA CRUMBLE UNDER RED FORCE

 

(Image taken from Manutd.com)

 

Last season, despite having a quality coach in Martin O'Neill, a Yank owner with big pockets and some decent quality players, Aston Villa only finished in midtable. Getting well beaten by us on both occassions United met them in the Premiership won't have helped. We played them three times that season within a short period of time. The first Premiership encounter was a 3-0 win at Villa Park and the second one was a 3-1 win at Old Trafford.

Well so far this season Villa are in the top half of the table and were on a solid run of home wins. And then United headed to Villa Park, also on hot form. Van de Saar returned in goal, Rio and Pique were in central defence with Vidic injured, Nani right mid, Scholesey and Anderson centre mid. Another game that we looked like we should win smoothly but as English/British sports fans know, you certainly can't take anything for granted, even with our record vs Villa.

Well the early stages of the game were certainly uneventful but then Villa went on the attack and in the 13th minute an Ashley Young cross found Gabriel Agbonlahor who gave Villa the lead. Villa kept hammering the United goal after that but never got a second and United started to slowly turn the play round and in the 36th minute Nani set up Rooney who took advantage of a dozy Villa defence to level the match before the England assasin completed the turnaround, Tevez setting him up in the 44th minute before Rio took advantage of a post corner scramble in injury time to get United's third.

The first half was enough to force O'Neill into a double substitution early on in the second half but that was only of short term help. Villa had a decent attacking spell but then went down first to ten men, then nine, losing their goalie. United missed a penalty but we weren't done yet, Giggsy giving United goal number four after a Villa defender deflected the ball in. After that we were ale to just cruise to the finish, the game had been over by half time anyway.

Elsewhere, Arsenal beat Bolton 2-0 at the Emirates Stadium despite the Gunners not hitting the net till the second half in what was a relatively messy performance for them. Man City beat Birmingham 1-0 at the City of Manchester stadium to keep up their run of form which is turning this into City's best season for ages. That leaves United 2nd in the Premiership, two points behind leaders Arsenal and still only one point ahead of City and having to go through the Champions League preliminaries.

North of the border, Aberdeen faced Inverness CT at the Caledonian Stadium. Derek Yuung opened the scoring and Caley never looked like getting an equaliser before half time but neither did the Dons look like getting a second. Caley did stemp up a gear in the second half and pulled level thanks to Derek Wyness, however the Dons quickly retook the lead after a Ross Tokely own goal. The Dons counter attacking saw them survive the rest of the game with the poor start to the season starting to look like history.

Elsewhere, Kilmarnock could only draw 1-1 with Falkirk at Falkirk Stadium while Hearts embarrassingly got beat 3-1 by Dundee United at Tynecastle. That allowed the Dons to move up to 6th place in the SPL - into the top half of the table for the first time this season! That leaves them still level on points with Hearts and the bottom half of the table but with a +2 goal difference advantage, though still seven points behind Hibs(who were beat 2-1 by Motherwell at Fir Park) and a garunteed UEFA Cup spot.

Now it's back to European football.

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