Now That Was A Derby!

It’s been a while since Villa saw a seven goal swinger at Villa Park, and to have come from two nil down in the process made last night even more special.

See we can do it at home!

Manager Paul Lambert gave his usual after match interviews following the game last night, and apologies that it’s come so late in the day, but I was struck with a mild case of shock and the best treatment was to sit there like a numpty rocking backwards and forwards, giggling, and focusing on not spilling my can.

It didn’t leave much time for typing.

Speaking to the Official Site following the game, Lambert admitted he had a horrendous feeling after the first ten minutes as he saw Albion take a two goal lead, one of which unfortunately came off Fabian Delph and went down as an own goal.

Feeling gutted wasn’t over for the game either, but there were a few things to cheer.

‘It was great to watch for the fans but not for me! We were two down after eight minutes. To be fair, the first goal was a fabulous strike, we couldn’t do anything about that. With the second goal, it was disappointing because we switched off at a free kick. Fabian does his best to stop the cross, but you find yourselves two down. That’s hard enough in any game but in a derby match it doubles because of the importance to the crowd.’

The game then, as those who didn’t faint know, kind of turned on it’s head and saw a fabulous fightback from the team with great goals from Andy Weimann, Leandro Bacuna and Fabian Delph himself – although I have to be honest and say despite the advantage of replays I’m still not sure what Bacuna was doing.

‘The turnaround was absolutely fantastic. What a performance it was! To turn it around – and the way we did it – was absolutely fantastic. I have confidence in them. You never lose faith in them, that’s for sure.’

The best thing really about our comeback was we didn’t really resort to aimless long balls to Benteke. Yes we were direct, but we were passing it around, we were playing with pace, and it was good to watch. For a neutral there won’t be many games better than that all season in my humble.

Again, just like the Liverpool performance did, there are clearly areas to improve on, we need to make better decisions at times, and sometimes our movement up front wasn’t what it should’ve been and midfield didn’t have an out – but that’s what we build from and improve on.

Playing good attacking football, and shaking things up by using the wing, trying to go through the middle and then when the opportunity presents itself go long to try and get in behind the opposition.

We’ve done it two games in a row now and got the rewards, and we almost got the rewards against Arsenal when we played like this as well.

‘It was important we kept level heads and tried to get back into it. We showed a lot of maturity in doing that. They grew up an awful lot there. To do it against your rivals shows the magnitude of it. I thought they were great. You have to hold your nerve, we did that and we were fantastic.’

Lambert admits he was disappointed with the equaliser to go three three, it was a lovely bit of passing from Albion, but we were caught flat footed in defence again, and whilst we struggled until the penalty call came along, I don’t think anyone could begrudge us the win really.

Albion’s centre halves would disagree obviously, but they’re probably shouting at the referee still.

Lambert ends by talking about knowing what that win would mean to the fans, not only was it a proper home performances and we’ve been starved of those for too long, but we have the bragging rights for the next few months, and following a win and performance like that, the bragging rights are huge!

Now let’s keep this going again, and really get some momentum in the league.

Now if you don’t mind me, I think I’m off to drink again and stick Match of the Day back on an endless loop before I start thinking about the Everton game.

Coffee people – only coffee!

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