There is no league like the Premier League. It doesn’t matter what they say. It was demonstrated in a historic victory for Aston Villa over Manchester City after a beautiful and very open game that Leon Bailey sentenced, leading Villa’s Park to the explosion (1-0).
Fourteen games later, Unai Emery has finally managed to beat his great rival Pep Guardiola. He couldn’t beat tremendously competitive teams like Valencia and Arsenal, and it was in the most unexpected way, with Aston Villa having gone 13 consecutive games without losing and overtaking City themselves in the table to place third, when they did.
It is a game to watch again. Far from going out to stop the bus, Emery played a brave game, taking risks and leading his rival to make mistakes. Many. Too many even for what we are used to in Guardiola’s team, who always polishes those details. To a large extent, that was the fault of the absence of Rodri, suspended, and the measure of putting John Stones and Rico Lewis, two players who naturally do not play in midfield, took its toll.
It’s not that Aston Villa was better, it’s that it was much better. Manchester City went through hell, not only with the verticality of Bailey and Watkins, shielded by a titanic McGinn, but also because of the pressure exerted by Kamara, Tielemans and Douglas Luiz and the sobriety of Pau Torres and Diego Carlos marking Haaland. The current Premier League champion only shot twice and it was in the same play, the work of the Norwegian, that he found a titanic Draw Martínez who won the game. Nothing else.
Quite the opposite in the Ederson area. The Brazilian did not live a peaceful second. Mainly due to the tension that Villa’s attacks carried. Before fifteen minutes into the game he had already scored two very clear ones, and that was just the beginning. Even Douglas Luiz gave him the warning when the clock was almost marking the break. He scored with a header, but it was disallowed.
Guardiola couldn’t find the key after the break. He wanted to revive the team by bringing out Julián Álvarez and Lewis to revive and take control of the midfield with Kovacic and Matheus Nunes, but not even with those. After the hour mark, McGinn enjoyed a resounding effort that he sent wide and the next time Bailey, with some help from a deflection, finally got the prize of the goal (74′).
From there Aston Villa showed that they have great team traits. Far from deciding to take a step back, hand over control to City and try to defend their advantage, quite the opposite. He stuck to his match plan and seeing that Guardiola was faltering he tried to finish it off. He almost got it. What’s more, the post prevented a great goal from Douglas Luiz that luckily was not necessary. There is City to worry about. There are now four Premier League games without a win, so we can now speak of a crisis.
Formation: 4411 Premier League playing field 1 4 12 44 3 14 31 6 11 8 7 31 5 25 24 3 2 82 19 9 20 47
1Emiliano Martínez
Ederson31
4 Ezri Thus
John Stones5
44′
Manuel Akanji25
44Boubacar Kamara
86′
If Gvardiol24
3Diego Carlos
Rúben Dias3
14Pau Torres
Kyle Walker2
6Douglas Luiz
Erling Haaland9
Bernardo Silva20
7John McGinn
42Filip Marschall
Stefan Ortega18
2Matty Cash
Scott Carson33
Nathan Aké6
17Clément Lenglet
Kalvin Phillips4
22Nicolò Zaniolo
32Leander Dendoncker
Sergio Gomez21
2023-12-07 05:49:56
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