With everybody stuffed from Christmas dinner, Boxing Day was invented for football and once again Aston Villa were rewarded with an away trip – Wales, in fact, the Liberty Stadium and Swansea City was the destination this year.
On the back of the disappointing and poor defeat to Leeds United in the last match, head coach Dean Smith saw his side bounce back to victory and a Conor Hourihane goal 20 minutes into the second half of the game was enough to ensure all three points travelled back with us.
It wasn’t a classic and Swansea had the better of the first 45 but we did improve second half. With plenty of criticism going goalkeeper Orjan Nyland’s way so far in the 2018/19 season, he won himself some plaudits to keep the clean sheet as he saved a 90th minute penalty from Wilfried Bony.
The victory lifts us back into tenth spot and we are three points from the Play-Offs so we’re more than still in the mix.
Liberty Stadium
Championship
26/12/2018 4:00 pm
Attendance: 20775
Referee: East
| Swansea City | Aston Villa | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hourihane (65) | |||||||
| Mulder | Nyland | ||||||
| Roberts | Elmohamady | ||||||
| van der Hoorn | Bree | ||||||
| Carter-Vickers | Chester | ||||||
| Naughton | Hutton | ||||||
| Fulton | 70 | Whelan | |||||
| Grimes | El Ghazi | ||||||
| Fer | 69 | Hourihane | 93 | ||||
| Celina | McGinn | ||||||
| McBurnie | Bolasie | 76 | |||||
| James | 62 | Abraham | 88 | ||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Nordfeldt | Hogan | ||||||
| Bony | 69 | Davis | |||||
| Montero | 62 | Bjarnason | 93 | ||||
| Dyer | 70 | Kodjia | 88 | ||||
| McKay | Bunn | ||||||
| Rodon | Adomah | 76 | |||||
| Byers | Revan | ||||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 19 | Goal attempts | 13 |
| 5 | On Target | 5 |
| 9 | Corners | 4 |
| 8 | Fouls | 11 |
| 2 | Yellow Cards | 2 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 59 | % | 41 |