Villa Lose To Shrewsbury In Recent Friendly

Aston Villa headed to the Greenhous Meadow on Saturday for our third pre season friendly of the summer and sadly went down two one on the day.

With new signing John Terry named as skipper for the season shortly before the match kicked off, he wore the armband for the first time in the game and we were largely on top in terms of a few chances for the first period but it was a poor performance overall and you’d expect even at this stage of pre season Bruce will be demanding plenty of improvement.

That pretty much continued after the break with Villa having two efforts in particular, James Chester and Alan Hutton heading off target but with fitness the real aim, Bruce made eight changes just after the hour mark.

Gary Gardner almost profited from that as he struck a free kick onto the woodwork from 25 yards, but it was the hosts who made the telling breakthrough 15 minutes from time.

A corner was our undoing sadly and four minutes later Sam Johnstone was beaten again from the edge of the area as the ball was drilled into the bottom corner.

Penalties have so far been Henri Lansbury’s friend in pre season and Jordan Lyden won this one as he went sent tumbling in the box…Lansbury stepped up to fire it home from 12 yards to register his third of the summer.

With no time left for an equaliser that was how the scoring finished but an interesting sight was seeing right backs Micah Richards and Alan Hutton finish the game as centre halves.

The only other highlight from the game was the walking tin of paint I guess.

Shrewsbury:

Henderson (MacGillivray 53), Shelis, Nsiala, Jules, Brown, Whalley (Rodman 61), Ogogo, Adams (B Morris 61), Nolan (James 61), Dodds (Gnahoua 61), C Morris (John-Lewis 61).

Subs:

Gallagher, Sears, Roberts.

Goals – Jules (75), Gnahoua (80).

Villa:

Johnstone, Hutton, Chester (Richards 62), Terry (Bree 62), Taylor (Amavi 62), Green (Gardner 62), Veretout (Tshibola 62), Hourihane (Lansbury 62), Bjarnason (Lyden 86), Hogan (Agbonlahor 62), McCormack (Davis 62).

Subs:

Sarkic, Samba, Bunn.

Goals – Lansbury (pen 90).

Referee: Steve Martin.
Assistants: Matt Jones & Greg Rollason.
Fourth Official: Ben Watkiss.

Attendance: 5,549 (2,593 away fans).