Taking to the Villa Park pitch for the first time in the Championship campaign of 2018/19, Aston Villa took a dramatic late victory over Wigan Athletic on Saturday.
Despite James Chester opening the scoring, we went in at the break tied at 1-1 with the newly promoted side and they soon took advantage until an own goal got us back on level terms ourselves. Birkir Bjarnason gave them a personal Icelandic clap in stoppage time as he secured a 3-2 win.
Welshman Chester stole the show narrowly over debutant John McGinn according to Whoscored.
They gave our centre-half a rating of 8.19 following his goal, 84.2% pass accuracy and five aerials won. He also boasted three successful tackles, one interception, one block and 12 clearances to his name.
Hibernian arrival McGinn can certainly count himself unlucky in their algorithm though as he polled 8.10 when the numbers were crunched as he got one shot on target out of four attempts, notched four key passes as he helped himself to a debut assist and had a pass accuracy of 80%. Defensively he put in one tackle, two interceptions and showed a bit of bite with four fouls as well – his debut only lacked a goal really and had he got that he’d have been top of the pile.
With two wins from two after a difficult summer, there are plenty of positives even if there’s plenty of improvement needed but Chester’s continued consistency is a major plus point and McGinn hitting the ground running could be massive.
Special mentions for Ahmed Elmohamady, Jack Grealish, Birkir Bjarnason and Axel Tuanzebe who all got in a rating of 7+ and despite finding himself on the bench, Conor Hourihane piped up with an assist of his own for the winner as well.
Think of what we might be capable of if we actually perform properly! Then again, we’ve said before haven’t we…
