Aston Villa 2-2 Hull City: Wild second-half sparks shared points

Aston Villa salvaged a result at Villa Park, ensuring a complete meltdown from the faithful was averted. Still, the 2-2 draw didn’t inspire much confidence at all.

A woeful 2019 continues for Aston Villa and manager Dean Smith. Saturday’s 2-2 draw with high-flying Hull City gave the club its second point from a possible nine in league play during January.

Couple that with a 3-0 FA Cup thrashing and it’s quite ugly at the moment.

Smith operated with his typical 4-3-3 as Alan Hutton inserted at right-back ahead of James Bree, while Albert Adomah and Yannick Bolasie occupied the wing positions. Hull went with an unchanged side from the team that thrashed Sheffield Wednesday 3-0 the weekend prior.

Villa began the match dominating in possession for the opening ten minutes. The claret and blues passed circles around Hull, but didn’t come particularly close to scoring. Disaster struck in the 27th-minute when Villa (once again) couldn’t deal with a long ball that Jarrod Bowen slotted under Lovre Kalinic. They followed that up with a goal from Evandro, 2-0 Hull, and it was the precipice of a Twitter and Villa Park meltdown.

James Chester and Conor Hourihane rescued the team just before half-time with a well-taken set-piece free kick.

Anwar El Ghazi, Jonathan Kodjia, and André Green (welcome back!) were introduced in the second-half. Tammy Abraham was able to latch onto a ground cross from Alan Hutton. The on-loan Chelsea forward fired into a Hull player and the rebound fell to his feet. This time, he made it count.

The game finished 2-2. Ipswich Town next weekend.