I doubt I’m the only Aston Villa fan now fearful of the arrival of match day, but Sunday was here again, so the faithful returned to Villa Park to see what the visit of David Moyes West Ham United side would bring.
With The Hammers being winless so far, and our form being less than great, many expected this would be another of those games where typical Villa encouraged our opponents to break their run of form, but it was a semi reasonable first half for a change.
We were more in charge, chances were coming, but that’s not to say it was great as it was pretty forgettable, West Ham hadn’t really turned up and we still mostly looked like a side who had never played together before. We did have the ball in the back of the net though as Ezra Konsa tapped home – sadly for us it was disallowed as Lucas Digne’s corner went out of play first.
The visitors improved at the break and they had a couple of good chances of their own, predictably for us, 16 minutes from the full time whistle, a Pablo Fornals effort looped up off Konsa and deflected passed Emi Martinez.
A third defeat of the season for Stevie and we are now back to a booing Villa Park. After a woeful end to 2021/22, that’s our easy season openers out of the way and we can look forward to Arsenal and Manchester City.
Thank God Gerrard got his players in and a full pre-season eh, think of the mess we’d be in right now if we’d focused on a system that actually plays to our strengths.
Villa Park
Premier League
28/08/2022 3:00 pm
Attendance: 41796
Referee: David Coote
| Aston Villa | West Ham United | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fornals (74) | |||||||
| Martinez | Fabianski | ||||||
| Cash | Johnson | 23 | |||||
| Konsa | Kehrer | ||||||
| Chambers | Zouma | ||||||
| Digne | Cresswell | ||||||
| Douglas Luiz | 66 | Emerson | 45 | ||||
| Kamara | Soucek | ||||||
| Coutinho | 66 | Fornals | |||||
| McGinn | 90+1 | Rice | |||||
| Watkins | Bowen | ||||||
| Ings | 78 | Scamacca | 65 | ||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Buendia | 66 | Coufal | 23 | ||||
| Augustinsson | Antonio | 65 | |||||
| Young | Lanzini | ||||||
| Nakamba | Downes | ||||||
| Olsen | Areola | ||||||
| Bailey | 78 | Cornet | |||||
| Archer | 90+1 | Ogbonna | |||||
| J Ramsey | 66 | Benrahma | 45 | ||||
| Iroegbunam | Coventry | ||||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 9 | Goal attempts | 7 |
| 3 | On Target | 2 |
| 3 | Corners | 2 |
| 10 | Fouls | 10 |
| 2 | Yellow Cards | 0 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 58 | % | 42 |