The mark of Champions

January 28, 2009 by Martin Banks
Filed under: Aston Villa, Match Reports

premier league trophy Emile Heskey isn’t reknowned for his goal scoring, so no-one was overly expectant that he’d get his Villa tally going in the first game for us. But he did. And he did it with style.

Villa, yet again, didn’t play like a team who are on a 10 game unbeaten run, but again we got the win. It’s said that to play averagely and keep winning is the mark of champions and it looks like the bookies are taking the idea a little more seriously as they switch us to the same odds to win the league as Arsenal (40-1).

Performance

Last night’s game started with a few small chances for each side and had just began getting dull when Brad Friedel launched a looooooooong goal kick into the Portsmouth half. Emile Heskey was first to the aerial ball, doing what he does best and flicking the ball onwards. It was a high looping header and as it came down Gabriel Agbonlahor showed his respect for Emile by emulating his playing style; Gabby headed the ball down behind the defenders for an on-running Heskey and Emile hit a superb low drive past James and into the near corner.

It was a deft touch, the kind you expect from a striker that cost you £15m.

Not too long after, James Milner nearly doubled the lead with a looping cross that almost caught James out. If it had gone in I’m sure Milner would have called it a shot, but the fact is that it was a mis-directed cross.

The best chance of the game came to Agbonlahor, but his eventual shot was very poor. Petrov slid in, doing some of his trademark battling, and his clearance took a deflection and floated over the defence for Gabby to run onto. The young England striker bombed at James’s goal and instead of trapping the ball and feeding the unmarked Heskey, he shot low and… wide! It was 5 yards out and it was such a poor shot I involuntarily laughed. The humour was soon lost on me, when I realised we’d just wasted a golden chance to put a cushion in the scoreline.

The second half saw Pompey wake up and create better chances, but Villa’s solid defence, Brad Friedel and a glaring error by former Villan, Peter Crouch, saw us hold on.

Friedel was arguably the man of the match, with some fine saves but he would’ve been able to do little with Pompey’s best chance had Crouch done better. The Gangly One managed to shoot wide from the middle of the goal, inside our our 6 yard box.

All in all it wasn’t a great performance, but it was better than at Sunderland. Had it been a better team than Pompey we wouldn’t have won playing like that, but if it had been a better team than Pompey we probably wouldn’t have played like that. We tend to raise our game for better opposition, a bit like the England national side.

The all-important fact is that we won both games. The mark of champions. Come on Villa!