Villa Party In Brighton After Hard Fought Win – Match Stats

So the day is finally here. Aston Villa make the trip up to the Amex Stadium to face Brighton and Hove Albion in Unai Emery’s third competitive game in charge.

Then sadly, we go into the utter sportswash of a winter break to accommodate a ridiculous World Cup out in Qatar before real football (not involving brown paper bags) returns on Boxing Day as we face Liverpool on home soil.

With some notable changes for the EFL Cup clash with Manchester United, that now emotions have settled was not really as bad a performance as the scoreline suggests, the question was how many changes would we have for this one as Emery looks at more of the squad in a competitive setting.

Well, Emery was going for the points and it was a strong squad again, albeit with some unexpected picks.

But it wasn’t a great start, a suicide pass from the usually unflappable Emi Martinez left Douglas Luiz completely without a paddle and 1-0 inside of one minute it was. We reacted slowly to that blow, and eventually started playing some football and with John McGinn tumbling in the box, Danny ings struck the resulting penalty away to have us back on level terms 20 minutes in.

Short of a few moments of play, and Brighton had better really, there’s not much to talk about with the rest of the half. Jacob Ramsey was probably the stand out with his running but bizarrely we had more shots at the half way point. I don’t remember them myself.

So what did the second half have in store?

Not a lot for a bit and then all of a sudden we woke up, some lovely play saw Matty Cash feed Emi Buendia for a diving header and it cannoned off the woodwork, and as they tried to clear, Dougie got his own back and stole the ball to feed Ings – and he made no mistake with potentially the slowest shot in history.

2-1…what happens next?

It’s no surprise to say Emery has a lot of work ahead of him, playing out from the back this much causes us problems as we adjust and defence continues to switch off, but on an attacking front you can see more of what he wants from us and the players are putting more moves (slowly) together.

It was ropey towards the end, but we kept our heads and Emery has his second win. Plenty still to do mind, but that’s not exactly a surprise to anyone is it.

Brighton & Hove Albion				Aston Villa
Mac Allister (1)				Ings (pen 20, 54)
Sanchez				Martinez
Gross				Cash
Colwill				Konsa
Dunk				Mings
Estupinan			81	Digne			82
March				J Ramsey			69
Mac Allister				Kamara
Lallana			5	Douglas Luiz			83
Caicedo				McGinn
Trossard				Buendia			74
Welbeck			59	Ings			83
Substitutes
Lamptey			81	Olsen
Enciso			5/59	Sanson
Undav			59	Chambers
Steele				Augustinsson			82
Gilmour				Young			69
Ferguson				Bednarek
van Hecke				Bailey			74
Veltman			59	Dendoncker			83
Turns				Archer			83

Game Statistics
7	Goal attempts	8
2	On Target	2
11	Corners	4
14	Fouls	11
2	Yellow Cards	7
0	Red Cards	0
65	%	35