Aston Villa picked up their second Premier League win of the season, defeating Newcastle United 1-0 on the road, marking the first time in 68 years that Villa have won successive games on Tyneside.
It was a performance which deserved all three points, giving Villa their fourth straight away win in all competitions and extending their unbeaten streak to five games.
Here are two positives and one negative from Saturday’s vital victory:
A win full of character
It can certainly be argued that they should have put the game to bed long before Newcastle’s late surge threatened to steal a point, but in many ways, grinding out a 1-0 win away from home was the best possible result for this fledgling Villa side.
Newcastle were inevitably going to throw the kitchen sink at Villa the longer the game went on, and they held firm.
Victor Lindelof was immense at centre-back, and Tyrone Mings deserves plaudits too, not just for his performance, but for rolling back the years and filling in at left-back in the latter stages.
The hosts only had one shot on target, but it forced an exceptional save from Zion Suzuki, who had another excellent game in goal. Digging out a win like Villa did today builds togetherness and after some shaky defensive displays, shows they are capable of shutting opponents out.
Manzambi continues to impress
It just had to be Johan Manzambi to score the winning goal, after he turned down Newcastle to sign for Villa in the summer. The 21-year-old is now up to five goal contributions in four starts for the club.
Manzambi is such a clever player, which is even more impressive given his lack of experience. He consistently gets himself in the right place, ghosting into the penalty area to give himself chances to score.
Like his goals against Spurs and Fenerbahce, Manzambi's decisive finish against Newcastle involved him finding a small pocket of space in the box and capitalising on the opportunity to score from close range.
He makes himself so difficult to mark, and is revelling in the relatively free role afforded to him by Unai Emery. Manzambi is already a huge hit at Villa Park.
The full-back injury curse continues
Villa’s remarkably bad run of injury luck at full-back continued, as Aaron Wan-Bissaka, who himself was filling in out of position on the left, became the latest victim as he appeared to pull his hamstring.
That follows Matteo Ruggeri suffering the same injury a week ago. Ian Maatsen has been out since mid September but is expected back in training next week.
His return cannot come a moment too soon, and if he is unable to play against Manchester City next weekend, the prospect of either Mings or Pau Torres at left-back against City’s embarrassment of quality wingers is a haunting thought.
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