Brighton 0-2 Villa; The win was all that mattered.

And thankfully we got it.
If nothing else, it should stop our confidence deteriorating even more.

Straight away, I should say that this was not a good performance today and you could see why Brighton are struggling so badly. I think Martinez only had to handle the ball on one occasion after a shot from Maupey.
They threatened a lot early on and I couldn’t see them not scoring, but the stat where they have scored only 10 goals at home in 13 games says it all. It’s hard to see why too really, as they do all the right things and really should have punished us at least a couple of times. Indeed, I just couldn’t see them not scoring.

We weren’t helping ourselves by giving the ball away so stupidly with Ramsey and Mings being particularly notable.
Douglas Luiz also gave away two shockers, but they were later in the game. Fortunately Brighton didn’t make anything from the chances, but make no mistake, we’d probably have been punished on each occasion by a more incisive side.

But while I thought we were not at all good early on, I did think things got better and at times, we looked much better than of late.

Today’s puzzling decision from the manager centred on him electing to play Ings and Watkins up top again.
And it didn’t work. Again.
Ings was invisible, full stop and while Watkins looked completely devoid of confidence and desire, he did at least manage to get on the scoresheet after Mings did exactly what we’ve all been complaining about in launching another long punt for Olly to run onto.
Fortunately, after maybe a hundred attempts of trying this tired, failed tactic, they actually got it right for once and Olly was given the chance to do exactly what he is best at. Running onto the ball, as opposed to being given it.
He simply dispatched it with aplomb.
I’m happy for him because he’s been getting dog’s abuse from some fans on other sites. He has been incredibly poor of late, in my opinion, but he’s allowed that as long as he keeps scoring.

That was our second goal though and I’ve got ahead of myself.
I know John McGinn got MOTM today and I can definitely see why. He ran his guts out and looked strong, while making decent runs, passing mostly well and even defending well to at times. A very good all round game.
But I would have given the award to Matty Cash, who seemed to be involved in nearly everthing. The icing on the cake was that he also scored a very tidy goal too. He’s another one I’m happy for as he’s been getting loads of verbals via the internet too. I really don’t get it, because I think he’s possibly been our single most consistent player this season.

And then, it seemed to me that in the last few minutes we actually increased the pressing. Okay, it wasn’t as dynamic as you’d expect, but it was very late into the game. Was this down to increased fitness or just increased confidence?
I suspect the latter and this result, which is frankly all that mattered today, will have seriously helped the lads.
Certainly Matty Cash looked ecstatic as he was leaving the pitch.

I have two things left to say.
The referee was terrible. I thought the latest edict was to try and let play continue and to give the benefit of the doubt? Well, at one stage we’d commited 5 fouls and got 4 bookings. Which makes us look the dirty side, which we weren’t at all. Indeed Brighton looked to me like they wanted to try and get a Villa player a red.
That said, we didn’t help ourselves.
Cash got one for taking his shirt off. I believe that there was sort of half permission to show pro Ukraine messages on your shirt today, which is what Cash did. But he took his shirt completely off, which is an automatic yellow.
Mings got one for steaming in and opening his trap after another Brighton foul and Ramsey one for something stupid too, which I forget.
The point is we shouldn’t be conceding needless bookings as often as we do.

And the final thing is to salute the fans, some of who spent five hours getting to the game after a big pile-up on the A23. They were in fantastic voice yet again.

Let’s hope we can move forward after this result.

UTV!