Aston Villa frustrated by Huddersfield Town
Three games. Two errors. 4pts dropped.
As the referee blew his whistle for full-time, a familar atmopshere ensued as fans poured out of Villa Park. Town had snatched a draw from an awful communication error between Tommy Elphick and Pierluigi Gollini allowed Michael Hefele to convert an emergency clearance into an equaliser.
The game started brightly, the boys in claret and blue continued their pressure they exterted on Rotherham a few days prior. Villa came close to an opener from a McCormack set piece, the intial ball deflected off the wall but McCormack’s weighted ball found the head of Tshibola, sadly he was ruled offside by a yard and the score remained 0-0. This gave the boys a lot of hope for the rest of the half and continued their pressure, with Tshibola and Bacuna winning balls deep and driving them through to Ayew, Grealish, McCormack and Gestede.
The attacking power of Villa finally broke through Huddersfield with a goal from Ross McCormack. It was a textbook goal from Villa, Grealish handed it off to Ayew, Ayew crossed it to Bacuna, who crossed it back to Grealish who found McCormack’s header with a lovely sliced volley. Villa Park erupted and the boys continued their fine pressure on goal. Ayew nearly killed the game with a great effort inside the box, but it was cleared and not long after the referee had blown for half-time.
The second half started well, Ayew broke forward a lot but couldn’t produce bulge the net for Villa. The substitutions changed the game, Di Matteo took off tired match winner Ross McCormack for young lion Andre Green, and midfield mastemind Tshibola for Gardner; whereas the opposition went all out taking off Lolley and Payne for Wells and Scannell. Gollini produced a diving save to keep out an overhead kick from the visitors, and they only increased their pressure from then on. Their freekick cannoned off the outer post for a goal kick, and no sooner had it been humped up-field was it hit back
A perfectly timed longball from the opposition caused Villa a massive problem, it had landed just in front of the captain leaving him with a choice, attempt to pace to the ball and clear it or leave it for Gollini, who was miles away from the ball. As it bounced again Elphick decided he couldn’t catch up to it and chose to latter. Elphick failed in guarding Gollini whilst he cleared it, and substitite Hefele had snatched a late goal for the Town
