Unsurprisingly, Garde named an unchanged side and the players took to the pitch aiming to build on their second win of the season, which came on Tuesday night against Crystal Palace.
The opening stages of the match proved drab.
A free-kick by former Villa player Albrighton presented Vardy, whose pace posed problems, with the chance to end his goal drought after thirteen minutes but the England striker’s header bounced wide.
A minute later, Bunn was booked for charging out of his area and stopping the goal-bound Vardy.
After twenty minutes, Kozák missed a glorious chance to open the scoring when he jumped on Huth’s poor back pass but his unconvincing striker was saved easily by Schmeichel at his near post.
Schmeichel’s goal kick released Vardy, whose daring lob was saved superbly off the line by the clawing Bunn. Recovering behind his line, Bunn then tried valiantly to stop Okazaki’s rebound but, for the second time in four days at Villa Park, goal-line technology was needed to confirm that the ball was in.
The hosts looked shell-shocked and the Foxes smelt blood. They had the opportunity to double their advantage four minutes after scoring when Cissokho was deemed to have used his arm to block Mahrez’s shot when the ball struck his arm up by his face with Cissokho facing the other way. The assistant referee flagged for handball and referee Roger East pointed to the spot, adding to the confusion regarding his rule. The winger stepped up to take the penalty, which was saved by a diving Bunn. It was Mahrez’s second consecutive penalty miss.
The penalty save did little to galvanise the hosts, who offered very little threat for the remainder of the first half. The only thing of note was Cissokho’s drive, which was saved comfortably by Schmeichel.
Seven minutes in to the second half, Cissokho proved wasteful when he collected Westwood’s backheel but could only clatter the ball at Schmeichel.
Just after the hour mark, Huth clearly elbowed Kozák in the box as the players fought to meet Westwood’s cross but East, who was having a nightmare afternoon, controversially ignored all appeals for a penalty.
The Villans seemed energised by East’s failure to award the blatant penalty but Bacuna squandered a good chance by sidefooting too close to Schmeichel after sixty-six minutes.
The Foxes continued to threaten on the break and they had the next opportunity to score, with Vardy using his pace to elude the Villa defence and round the goalkeeper. Forced wide, he crossed for the advancing Drinkwater, who volleyed wide from eight yards out.
Kozák’s header from very close range following a set piece then went high and wide to the left.
Eight minutes after replacing Gil, Gestede was on the score sheet, bulldozing his way past Huth and rifling into the top corner via a deflection off Morgan.
The goal lifted Villa Park, where the crowd roared the lions on for the remainder of the game but, other than Kozák’s right footed shot from the centre of the box in the eighty-fifth minute that was too high, the Villans showed little evidence of having acquired a cutting edge and the shares were spoiled.
Speaking post-match, Garde said:
“In the first half we were not at the same level we were on Tuesday against Crystal Palace. The second half was much better and I was happy about that. We have done well. We were more aggressive, more positive and more attacking. When you look at the level of both teams in this game there is not such a huge gap that you see in the table.”
2 Comments
Huth should of got a red twice, later on he elbowed Kozak in the face again. Replace Lescott, Kozak and maybe Veretout and we could survive.
We as a family are all Villa fans, due to our location we are not lucky enough to be able to visit Villa park that often infact our last visit was the home game we won against West Ham which our son said was the best day of his life!!
So we sat watching the game, willing them to win & felt that every player played with their heart on their sleeve. We were thrilled to see Bunn be given another oportunity to show us what he can do & thought his performance was brilliant!! Ayew, Cissoko, Bacuna & Kozak showed their fighting spirit along with the others, I name them as they were the names we heard the most.
We were destined to loose this game the way decissions were going against us but we kept going.
What really annoyed us was watching the feedback that Tim Sherwood was giving, what right has he got to comment on anything, over the years we have seen managers come and go & like a lot of people the likes of Ron Atkinson & Martin O’Neal will always have big shoes to fill, Paul Lambert caused some disputes in our household I thought he could have done better if he had been given money to spend like Sherwood was. So after he goes in comes Mr Sherwood with his gunho attitude taking the glory for things like the FA cup final as his success, and our survival last year which really was down to others results. He let our best players go & then blamed the problems with the new signings on everyone else, leaving these players out to prove a point & costing us games which contributed to the position we are in now !!
So to watch him squirming while he made some comments drove us mad, then to add injury to insult he chooses a Leicester player for man of the match. Yes he may have said that the Villa fans were passionate but isn’t that stating the obvious.
We think this website is great & are so glad we found it, thanks for keeping us in touch with what’s going on.