Villa Somehow Take All Three Points From Leeds – Match Stats

After the shambles that was Stevenage, Aston Villa were back in action this evening against old favourites Leeds United.

Manager Unai Emery made the expected changes for this one, and there even a surprise bench place for signing Alex Moreno, so his paperwork must have flown through.

It was a bright start to the game as well, I was barely even online and following a Leeds corner we broke quickly, and Boubacar Kamara found Leon Bailey who hit the box and bent the ball into the back of the net with some style.

1-0 and only three minutes in, this could be a lively one, it was certainly going to be a physical one as Lucas Digne had to go off ten minutes in after a nasty looking collision, so it was a quick debut for Moreno. Ollie Watkins and Emi Martinez also had their fair share of some tough challenges, but 20 odd minutes in it seems the ref was happy to let most things go unless a Leeds player started crying. With that said, they did have a semi reasonable shout for a penalty ignored.

It turned into a scrappy game and we couldn’t really get a foothold, but we weren’t really tested either. We then saw Danby Ings early on as Watkins went off with an injury of his own.

An endless scrappy battle describes the rest of the half, although Leeds had a great chance as they broke through but Moreno did well to cover Martinez on the line. A second opportunity brought a great save out of Martinez and then a great block from Young I think, but you knew the game had turned and they were beginning to cause real problems, and in stoppage time they had a goal ruled out for marginal offside – I have to say it didn’t look like it to me, but VAR strangely didn’t disagree with the referee.

Whatever anyone thought of Leeds style of play, we were lucky to go in 1-0 up with the chances that fell their way late on.

Maybe that was the bad half?

Well, whatever Emery had hoped to tweak at the break really didn’t seem to be working and we had to rely on another wonderful save from Martinez as they remained basically all over us.

It was a tough old half and we didn’t do a lot, and then all of a sudden Bailey woke up and Emi Buendia nodded in the rebound. Despite protests, he wasn’t offside and VAR reversed the decision to make it 2-0.

Thoroughly undeserved, but absolutely hysterical.

Moreno should’ve made it three shortly after as well, so should’ve Ings with his chance, and although there was subtle improvement, and further good chances were fashioned – but not taken – we were still way too open at the back and rather predictably the utter muppet that is Patrick Bamford managed to get one back.

2-1 was how it ended, despite the improvement I have no idea how we won that. I also really don’t care as I’m not sure (again) how some of their players remained on the pitch, and given recent history with this particular side, it’s probably even more enjoyable a win given how poor we were.

Aston Villa				Leeds United
Bailey (3), Buendia (64)				Bamford (83)
Martinez				Meslier
A Young				Ayling
Konsa				Koch			88
Mings				Cooper
Digne			10	Struijk			66
Bailey				Harrison			67
Douglas Luiz				Roca			77
Kamara				Aaronson			77
J Ramsey			81	Adams
Buendia			81	Gnoto
Watkins			32	Rodrigo
Substitutes
Sanson			81	Firpo			88
Ings			32	Bamford			67
Moreno			10	Llorente
Chambers				Perkins
Nakamba				Robles
Bednarek				Kristensen
Coutinho			81	Gelhardt			77
Olsen				Wober			66
K Young				Greenwood			77

Game Statistics
11	Goal attempts	16
5	On Target	4
0	Corners	11
12	Fouls	18
2	Yellow Cards	2
0	Red Cards	0
54	%	46