Revenge was in the air on early Saturday evening as Aston Villa welcomed Manchester United back to Villa Park looking to make up for our trip a few days ago to Old Trafford where we were once again cheated out of a deserved result.
Head coach Steven Gerrard largely selected the squad fans had expected to see with Morgan Sanson coming into midfield, and new signing Lucas Digne taking the left back spot. Sadly for us, United were more at the races today and had the lead six minutes in, although arguably Emi Martinez will feel he should’ve saved it. It was a sluggish start again, but we soon found our feet and worked ourselves more into the game.
Chances were coming our way and David De Gea had to be lively between the sticks, so again, heads hadn’t gone and we were more than in this. We’d have to wait and see if the leveller would come in the second period though and following an enforced half time change, we picked up straight away and again had good chances, but it just wasn’t falling for us again. There’s no hiding we were poor overall though and that tells you had bad United were.
Then the predictable sucker punch, Tyrone Mings sat too deep again and with a lazy ball back from midfield, they had acres as they sliced through us to make it 2-0.
We were incredibly sloppy at this point, and we were still wasting extremely good chances. With a little over ten left on the clock, Mings charged forward and after a nice bit of interplay the ball found it’s way to Ramsey who rifled it into the back of the net.
2-1 – was a comeback in store?
We were patient, too patient for many but when the defence opened up, we were through again and Phillipe Coutinho made it 2-2 as he scored on his debut following a great little move between Buendia and Ramsey.
A much better second half and when we put it together we really do look good. Problem is, when we don’t, we still have a ton of avoidable errors in our play and not a lot has changed on that front.
A deserved point overall, but we are desperate for some consistency.
Villa Park
Premier League
15/01/2022 6:30 pm
Referee: David Coote
| Aston Villa | Manchester United | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| J Ramsey (77), Coutinho (82) | Bruno Fernandes (6, 67) | ||||||
| Martinez | De Gea | ||||||
| Cash | Dalot | ||||||
| Konsa | 45 | Lindelof | |||||
| Mings | Varane | ||||||
| Digne | Telles | ||||||
| Sanson | 68 | Fred | |||||
| Douglas Luiz | Matic | ||||||
| J Ramsey | Greenwood | 89 | |||||
| Watkins | Bruno Fernandes | 89 | |||||
| Ings | 76 | Elanga | 78 | ||||
| Buendia | Cavani | ||||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Targett | Jones | ||||||
| Steer | Maguire | ||||||
| Young | Mata | ||||||
| Coutinho | 68 | Lingard | 89 | ||||
| Kesler-Hayden | Heaton | ||||||
| Hause | 45 | Sancho | 78 | ||||
| Carney Chukwuemeka | 76 | Henderson | |||||
| Archer | van de Beek | 89 | |||||
| Iroegbunam | |||||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 13 | Goal attempts | 13 |
| 9 | On Target | 6 |
| 3 | Corners | 6 |
| 8 | Fouls | 13 |
| 1 | Yellow Cards | 2 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 55 | % | 45 |