So tonight finally arrived. Aston Villa made the trip to The Hawthorns to face off against West Bromwich Albion in the second leg of our Play-Off Semi-Final clash earlier this evening.
With a 2-1 advantage (away goes don’t count for double) from the opening tie at the weekend at Villa Park, head coach Dean Smith’s side were also boosted by Dwight Gayle’s suspension as it limited the options for the hosts who had to come out and attack.
That didn’t mean it wouldn’t be a difficult game though as all joking aside, they finished where they did in the Championship table for a reason.
We bossed the match pretty much again but had no cutting edge and they were capable helped by the referee who seemed to not know that a yellow card existed for large portions of the game, and the hosts levelled the scores 29 minutes in and even another red card via two eventual bookable offences for Chris Brunt saw no breakthrough from us. At least it was an attempt at balance from the ever pathetic Chris Kavanagh.
We even saw penalty shouts at both ends suitably ignored, so they’ll be crying about that again.
We weren’t at our best again but we did enough, took it to penalties and took a 4-3 victory with Jed Steer’s double penalty save giving me memories of Mark Bosnich against Tranmere all those years ago.
Sod it, Wembley and the final it is but if we look outside of this game, despite improvement, we need a lot more, but for tonight that doesn’t matter.
Boing boing Baggies, but the Villa go marching on.
As for the BBC text coverage, good job we don’t bleat like local rivals because the stats say it all, even if their coverage was more warped than a Donald Trump convention.
“See You Tuesday” – Eight Words From Villa Star Delights Fans Given Fitness Concerns
The Hawthorns
Championship Play-Off Semi-Final 2nd Leg
14/05/2019 9:00 pm
Attendance: 25702
Referee: Kavanagh
| West Bromwich Albion | Aston Villa | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Johnstone | Steer | ||||||
| Dawson | Elmohamady | 114 | |||||
| Bartley | Tuanzebe | 122 | |||||
| Hegazi | Mings | ||||||
| Holgate | Taylor | ||||||
| Brunt | McGinn | ||||||
| Johansen | 71 | Hourihane | |||||
| Gibbs | Grealish | ||||||
| Phillips | 75 | Green | 75 | ||||
| Rodriguez | 93 | Abraham | |||||
| Murphy | 82 | El Ghazi | 101 | ||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Morrison | 71 | Whelan | |||||
| Townsend | Jedinak | 122 | |||||
| Montero | Davis | 114 | |||||
| Leko | 93 | Kodjia | 101 | ||||
| Bond | Kalinic | ||||||
| Adarabioyo | 82 | Hause | |||||
| Harper | 75 | Adomah | 75 | ||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 10 | Goal attempts | 24 |
| 3 | On Target | 6 |
| 4 | Corners | 15 |
| 15 | Fouls | 10 |
| 3 | Yellow Cards | 2 |
| 1 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 27 | % | 73 |