Aston Villa took a trip to Sheffield earlier today to face off against fellow Play-Off hopefuls Wednesday at Hillsborough.
It was also a first meeting with former gaffer Steve Bruce following his departure from B6, so that added to the occasion.
All that mattered from our perspective was the three points, and typically they got their first shot on target to open the scoring seven minutes into the game.
They also gave it a good shot in typical Bruce fashion and made life incredibly difficult for us with the referee acting like a 12th man, so John McGinn’s leveller was well received, as was the incredibly dramatic finish.
With Jed Steer pulling off the penalty save to give us a second wind, late on in stoppage-time Albert Adomah and Tammy Abraham secured the icing on the cake to make it 3-1, and yes we were largely poor (by our own standards), but it was Bruce’s game of the season given the nonsense in the buildup.
We can expect plenty of headlines about certain players sending certain messages I would expect.
Speaking to the BBC following the end of the match, head coach Dean Smith said of the performance.
“In this stage of the season where we’re pushing to get a play-off spot, we were on a five-game winning run and now we’ve got that to six. It was very much a tale of two halves, first halves we started really well and then we caught. We controlled the ball, I thought we looked dangerous, but we didn’t work the goalkeeper as much as we should have.”
