My first taste of the West Midlands derby was next up and to be honest I was feeling the nerves before this game. I think it’s fair to say there was no such thing as a favourite going into this one. Although we had started the season well, we were going into the game on the back of some poor performances and we were the away team. Despite Villa sitting in the bottom three for most of the season, they have actually accumulated four more points than us in the last 5 matches.
Villa started very well, their plan was clearly to attack from the first whistle in an attempt to catch us off guard, and it worked. A long ball over the top split our centre back pairing in two and Agbonlahor was always going to have the better of Chester and Evans, once he was through on goal he easily rounded our keeper to slot the ball home within the first 7 minutes.
It didn’t take long for us to pull things level again, we had started to get a foothold on the game after the early goal and we were knocking the ball about nicely. After a decent passage of play, involving Peruzzi and Sissoko on the right, it was the latter that whipped in a great low cross for Rondon to slot home the equaliser, the game was back on.
Not much else happened in the second half as both teams scarpered each other’s attack, both creating a few decent opportunities but on the whole we were just about the better team. My half time team talk was passionate and motivational, the lads come out all guns blazing and we really took the game to Villa, within 10 mins of the restart Rondon had grabbed his second, this time courtesy of a Morrison through ball.
Things started to get a little heated after that, with both sides throwing tackles in left, right and centre. Three yellow cards were brandished in the space of 90 seconds, with the a red card given to Gestede a minute later for a disgusting challenge. After that both sides calmed down a little and we stepped up our game even more, Villa found it difficult to break us down and we took advantage of the extra man as Morrison scored our third with a sublime volley in the box, once again Sissoko was the provider on the right.
Villa did come at us for the latter stages of the game, once again benefiting from a long ball over the top, this time it was Sinclair who got in behind our defence and coolly placed the ball past Myhill, who once again was found in no-man’s land.
The closing stages were tense and with the crowd behind them, Villa through everything at us. Agbonlahor even had one final chance to get the equaliser in the dying minutes of the game but the pressure was too much and he fluffed his finish.
All in all I was happy with the result after the game but there are still a few question marks over certain individuals, one of whom is the captain Darren Fletcher, who for one reason or another has been appalling so far this season, this performance in particular being one of his best since I have taken over.