Aston Villa hosted fellow promotion hopefuls Middlesbrough at Villa Park earlier this afternoon as the 2018/19 Championship campaign edges towards a close.
With three successive victories for head coach Dean Smith in recent games, optimism has again returned and a fourth win on the spin would be massive for Play-Off hopes as we went into the game only two points shy of Derby County who occupy sixth place.
Villa started brightly and Anwar El Ghazi gave us the advantage just ahead of the half hour mark. John McGinn doubled our lead just ahead of the halftime break and Boro were largely broken by that point. Second half we remained in control and added to our lead in the 88th minute as substitute Albert Adomah made it 3-0 and that was where the game finished.
Our fourth straight win sees us move back into sixth place, but Derby and Bristol City do have games in hand.
The battle and dream is back on though and that’s what counts.
Villa Park
Championship
16/03/2019 4:00 pm
Attendance: 36263
Referee: Bond
| Aston Villa | Middlesbrough | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| El Ghazi (28), McGinn (44), Adomah (88) | |||||||
| Steer | Randolph | ||||||
| Elmohamady | Ayala | ||||||
| Hause | Flint | ||||||
| Mings | Fry | ||||||
| Taylor | Shotton | 32 | |||||
| Whelan | Howson | ||||||
| El Ghazi | 75 | Mikel | |||||
| McGinn | Saville | ||||||
| Grealish | Friend | ||||||
| Green | 65 | Wing | 49 | ||||
| Abraham | 72 | Hugill | 62 | ||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Carroll | Konstantopoulos | ||||||
| Jedinak | Clayton | ||||||
| Davis | 75 | Assombalonga | 49 | ||||
| Bjarnason | McNair | ||||||
| Kodjia | 72 | Fletcher | 62 | ||||
| Kalinic | Downing | 32 | |||||
| Adomah | 65 | Besic | |||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 18 | Goal attempts | 4 |
| 5 | On Target | 1 |
| 6 | Corners | 2 |
| 9 | Fouls | 16 |
| 0 | Yellow Cards | 1 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 61 | % | 39 |