And with that, I’m done. Here’s the match report again. Here’s the match report again. Bye!
Mikel Arteta is pleased:
We talked a lot before the match that we had to be sharp, and physical, and clever in what we wanted to do, and we controlled the game. We totally controlled it. The shame was we didn’t score the second goal and the third one, and when you do that you’re going to dig deep in the last few minutes. That’s where we have to take the team. I’m really pleased with the quality, how we competed in every phase of the game. I’m really proud of the boys.
Here’s that Gerrard interview. Prickly.
"I thought certain individuals lacked belief."
— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) March 19, 2022
"I'm emotional in interviews, I care, I don't like getting beat."
Steven Gerrard gives and honest assessment of Villa's struggles against Arsenal, and clears the air with @TheDesKelly... pic.twitter.com/E1mzOFpHND
Steve Gerrard has an interesting chat with BT Sport. “I actually thought your questions would be a little bit better. Nothing personal,” he tells Des Kelly. Also:
It was a tough first half because wee allowed it to be tough. I thought our performance lacked belief and it wasn’t until half-time that we showed we could improve. We were much better first half, second half we deserved to be behind, I thought we were second best. We set up today to be aggressive but I thought we lacked a bit of belief in what we were doing and a few individuals lacked belief. It’s hard to perform when not everybody believes in it. We managed to create three or four interesting moments in the game, but I’ve got no complaints with the scoreline.
Nick Ames has filed his match report from Villa Park:
This was a test Arsenal needed to pass and they did so with conviction, even if the margin of victory was narrow. They had lost here in their previous two visits but this time a similar outcome was never on: a fluent and controlled performance, particularly during a first half in which they afforded Aston Villa almost nothing, ensured their claim to fourth place looks overwhelming and it was a good way to banish any hangover from Wednesday’s home defeat to Liverpool. Bukayo Saka’s crisp strike on the half-hour was enough to restore their momentum and, although they were visibly tired towards the end, a mainly disappointing Villa only showed occasional signs of changing the mood.
Much more here:
Bukayo Saka says this was “a very big win. On the back of the Liverpool defeat today was even bigger”. He also says why he had a chat with the referee on his way off the field: “I wasn’t complaining, I just wanted to let him know that’s my game, I’m going to run at players and sometimes I need a bit more protection when players are purposely trying to kick me.”
That Leno save from Coutinho’s free-kick was by no means extraordinary, but he was absolutely mobbed by teammates when the final whistle sounded. This kind of spirit is just as encouraging as this kind of performance, I think.
A big save from Bernd Leno to deny Coutinho with the last kick of the game 😲
— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) March 19, 2022
The final whistle blows and the Arsenal players run to celebrate with their keeper! pic.twitter.com/tcwAJOc7UQ
Updated
The league table looks pretty good for Arsenal, four points clear of fifth place, six points clear of sixth, and with a game in hand over both.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Man City | 29 | 50 | 70 |
| 2 | Liverpool | 29 | 55 | 69 |
| 3 | Chelsea | 28 | 38 | 59 |
| 4 | Arsenal | 28 | 13 | 54 |
| 5 | Man Utd | 29 | 8 | 50 |
| 6 | West Ham | 29 | 12 | 48 |
| 7 | Tottenham Hotspur | 28 | 9 | 48 |
| 8 | Wolverhampton | 30 | 5 | 46 |
| 9 | Aston Villa | 29 | 1 | 36 |
| 10 | Southampton | 29 | -9 | 35 |
| 11 | Crystal Palace | 29 | 1 | 34 |
| 12 | Leicester | 26 | -5 | 33 |
| 13 | Brighton | 29 | -10 | 33 |
| 14 | Newcastle | 29 | -17 | 31 |
| 15 | Brentford | 29 | -13 | 30 |
| 16 | Leeds | 30 | -33 | 29 |
| 17 | Everton | 27 | -18 | 25 |
| 18 | Watford | 29 | -26 | 22 |
| 19 | Burnley | 27 | -16 | 21 |
| 20 | Norwich | 29 | -45 | 17 |
Final score: Aston Villa 0-1 Arsenal
90+6 mins: Villa take an age to get ready before finally Coutinho curls the free-kick towards the far corner. Leno punches it clear, and the final whistle goes!
Updated
90+5 mins: With Villa out of time and ideas Pepe fouls Douglas Luiz on the left, and the home side will end the game with a dangerous free-kick. Up comes the keeper!
90+3 mins: Villa send a long cross onto Traore’s head, but he heads wide instead of back across goal, and was offside anyway.
90+2 mins: Steve McManaman picks Saka as his man of the match, obeying the law of the scorer in a 1-0 game. Saka was much better in the first half (before that Mings foul) than the second, but he’s a lovely player and deserves a full mantelpiece.
90+1 mins: There will be four minutes of stoppage time.
89 mins: Bailey hits a good cross from the left, but there’s nobody at the far post to even try to win it. Tierney nods it behind for a corner, which Traore nods behind for a goal kick.
87 mins: “They’re booing Saka this much for scoring? I don’t get it,” boggles Zach Neeley. He wasn’t booed for scoring, he was booed for getting fouled.
87 mins: Cash runs 30 yards, ends up with Arsenal players all around him and nobody to pass to, so turns and passes the ball back 30 yards again.
Updated
86 mins: Ings sends a header looping onto the roof of the net, and Arsenal bring Rob Holding on for Odegaard.
Updated
84 mins: Arsenal’s defensive organisation and commitment has been impressive, from front to back. That is not a sentence I’ve been able to write for a while. Their forwards have worked like absolute hounds to deny Villa any easy possession.
81 mins: Ings replaces Watkins. There doesn’t seem a lot of point replacing your striker if the rest of the team can’t create a chance for them, but you never know.
79 mins: Another excellent Young cross, but again Arsenal win the header. On the bench, Ings is getting ready to come on.
77 mins: Lacazette comes off, and Nketiah comes on.
74 mins: A lovely ball from Smith Rowe to Lacazette carves the home defence wide open, but the Frenchman has a shot instead of playing Odegaard through on goal, and it’s well blocked.
Updated
71 mins: For the first time in the match, Villa are building up something of a head of steam. Young runs between Soares and Pepe and goes down, but the referee isn’t impressed. Then Douglas Luiz tries to find Coutinho’s run, but overhits the pass.
69 mins: Bukayo Saka is booed by the home fans as he heads to the touchline as he’s taken off. Nicolas Pepe is on. Villa meanwhile bring on Leon Bailey and Bertrand Traore for Ramsey and Buendia.
Updated
68 mins: Villa hit the post! Watkins cuts inside from the left and his shot skids off Tierney’s thigh and into the woodwork.
66 mins: Douglas Luiz curls the free kick way over the bar.
65 mins: Partey clatters into Cash, bringing him down, earning himself a booking and presenting Villa with a shooting chance, albeit from long range.
Updated
64 mins: Saka has an almost identical shot to that McGinn one, only with his left foot. It also skids wide.
62 mins: “Would Steven Gerrard enhance his prospects on landing his dream job by winning things in Scotland or grinding to 8th-12th for the next five seasons at Villa?” wonders Gary Naylor. “It’s a genuine question I feel.” Unlike most young managers Gerrard has the advantage of having a big club that’s predisposed to like him, though I suppose several others will be predisposed not to. Generally I think the only way for an English manager to get a job at one of the regular Champions League-qualifying teams is to first manage a lesser team into the Champions League and/or league title contention. Villa seems a decent place to attempt that?
Updated
60 mins: Chance for Villa! The ball rebounds to the feet of McGinn, 20 yards out, but he curls wide! That’s their first shot of the game.
57 mins: Ashley Young does a nice shimmy to fool Cedric, but then goes down under absolutely no contact, wins a free kick and earns Cedric a booking.
55 mins: Arsenal are pushing for a second here. You’d have thought that in the next few minutes either the scoreline will change, or Villa’s team will.
53 mins: Ramsey goes down under a little bit of pressure from Saka, leaving Villa in a whole heap of trouble when the referee doesn’t give a free kick. Saka runs into the area, cuts onto his right foot, but takes a slightly heavy touch and is closed down.
Updated
52 mins: Young cuts inside from the left and sends a delicious cross towards the far post, but Gabriel wins the header and sends it behind.
51 mins: Arsenal win the ball on halfway and spring forward, but Xhaka’s shot hits Konsa’s calf and spins behind.
48 mins: The Gunners win a corner, which is pulled back to Smith Rowe on the edge of the D, but his shot is a bit feeble and Martinez catches.
47 mins: No personnel changes at the interval, and Arsena have restarted, as they began the first half, on the front foot.
Updated
46 mins: The players are back out and the game is back on.
“Missed the first half (slept off, don’t ask...), and just reading your posts for updates,” writes Baganboy on Twitter. “Seems Villa has been okay but unlucky, and Arsenal truly evil in the first half. Is that a fair reading?” Not really: Arsenal were really impressive for most of the half, but it’s almost like they switched once they had a league to protect from fluent attacking and entertainment to focusing a little more on provocation.
Half time: Aston Villa 0-1 Arsenal
45+4 mins: The visitors deservedly lead at the break, but the game has taken a bit of a bad-spirited turn since the goal and unless there’s significant cooling-off done at the break the second half could get spicy.
45+2 mins: There will be three minutes of stoppage time, or somesuch.
45 mins: Xhaka gets the booking that has been coming for a while, for a gentle push on Buendia. Taking that incident in isolation that’s an absurdly harsh booking, but then I’m sure Andy Madley isn’t.
43 mins: Arsenal send a set piece into the Villa area. Martinez claims it, and Xhaka sprints 15 yards to get in his way and stop him releasing the ball quickly. Every bit as cynical as the tactical fouls that are now normally rewarded with a booking, and with similar intentions.
42 mins: Replays show Partey’s “marking” of Mings at a corner a couple of minutes ago, very much the kind of shenanigans that a VAR might have been interested in.
40 mins: “Why do referees never book players for surrounding him like the Arsenal players did there?” asks Samuel of that melee. “He’s given the foul is going to book Mings, everything is in control but those players go steaming in and make everything look worse. Not one of them checked to see if Saka was OK so it would seem getting someone getting sent off is more important than making sure their team mate is ok. Any wonder the respect campaign died before it started.” I have had the pleasure of watching most Premier League sides beat my team this season, and have noted the ones who did so with grace and good sporstmanship (Crystal Palace impressed, unexpectedly), and those who exhibited little of either. Arsenal were very much towards the extreme end of the latter group.
38 mins: A nice Arsenal break ends with Tierney waiting a moment until Cash is upon him, and then hitting a cross straight into him.
Bukayo Saka strikes for Arsenal 🔥
— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) March 19, 2022
That's double figures in terms of goals this season as he gives Arsenal the lead at Villa Park! pic.twitter.com/paOIYCiUj3
36 mins: A pass towards Saka runs out of play, and the home fans boo the prospect of his involvement, and cheer when he doesn’t reach it.
35 mins: McGinn also gets booked for something he did during that little fracas. Saka is treated on the pitch for a couple of minutes but is back on his feet and ready to play on.
Bukayo Saka strikes for Arsenal 🔥
— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) March 19, 2022
That's double figures in terms of goals this season as he gives Arsenal the lead at Villa Park! pic.twitter.com/paOIYCiUj3
32 mins: Handbags! Mings brings Saka down with the follow-through from a sliding challenge and most of the Arsenal team react angrily, most of the Villa team come over to stand up for their man, and it all gets a little pushy-shovey. The referee waits for VAR to have a good look and then shows Mings a yellow - it was a pretty good tackle until he took Saka out, certainly not two-footed or out of control.
Updated
GOAL! Aston Villa 0-1 Arsenal (Saka, 30 mins)
Arsenal, and Saka’s low shot, find a way through! Cedric’s long cross is headed down, bobbles off a few players to Saka, whose first-time half-volley isn’t cleanly hit but finds a way through a posse of players, surprises a clearly unsighted Martinez, and hits the net!
Updated
27 mins: A vague sniff of something for Villa. Coutinho’s nice flick lets Watkins run towards the Arsenal area, but Cedric Soares spots the danger and comes across to snuff it out. “It’s been interesting charting the fall and rise of Cedric’s reputation recently,” says Charles Antaki. “Pre-Tomiyasu it was dreadful, then Tomiyasu arrived and played well and Cedric was simply forgotten. Tomiyasu got injured and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth as Cedric re-remerged and people recalled how rotten he was … then he played Ok … then he played well ... and now it’s he’s commanding grudging near-respect. A bit more of this and he’ll turn into an indispensable legend (before he has one dreadful game and it’s down back the snake again).”
23 mins: McGinn gives the ball away really poorly on the edge of his own area, but there are enough defenders around to stop Arsenal profiting. A quarter of the way through, Arsenal remain on the front foot and Villa are yet to have a shot.
21 mins: Villa nearly conjure something, McGinn sending a lovely dipping diagonal ball into the area for Watkins, but White throws out a leg and stop it reaching him.
18 mins: Big miss! Arsenal work the ball out to Saka on the right and he exchanges passes with Odegaard, pulls the ball past the keeper at the near post and across goal, where Smith Rowe makes a last-minute burst to reach it before Lacazette and send it wide!
15 mins: Jacob Ramsey is booked for bringing Smith Rowe down with a sliding challenge.
Updated
13 mins: “I’m fortunate to be in Edinburgh today for their summer, as today is as bright and sunny as in the photo taken outside Villa Park, and the temperature is in double figures,” writes Kev. “The sunshine has brought out the Ice Cream vans and that had me wondering, will the Villa be known as Aston Vanilla if Arsenal give them a good licking today?” But what if it goes the other way? Arsenalmond?
10 mins: That’s a better save! Saka’s left-footed cross from the right is chested by Konsa and would have gone just inside the post had Martinez not tipped it wide! That would have been a really weird own goal: that was very much a deliberate chest by Konsa, not an inadvertent deflection, and I have no idea what he was thinking when he decided it was a good idea.
9 mins: The night’s first save comes from Martinez. Luckily the shot he saves comes from Partey, who from a tasty position a yard or so outside the area sidefoots straight at the keeper.
Updated
9 mins: McGinn sends in a lovely cross from the free-kick, but nobody gets on the end of it and it flicks off a defender and behind for a corner, which White heads clear.
8 mins: Soares blocks off Young’s run as he attempts a one-two with Buendia, and Villa now have a free-kick just outside Arsenal’s area.
7 mins: Arsenal have started the game well, repeatedly winning the ball back around halfway and keeping it impressively. We await Villa’s first attack.
3 mins: Shot! Young misjudges a pass to Saka, who gets free down the right and pulls back to Odegaard. It’s an almost identical pull-back to the one that led to a goal at Watford a few weeks back, and to the same player, but this time his path to goal is blocked so he lays off to Smith-Rowe, who blasts over.
Updated
2 mins: Early touches for the two keepers as McGinn’s overhit pass runs through to Leno, whose overhit pass is tapped back to Martinez by Mings.
1 min: Peeeeep! The game has begun!
Updated
This is true, except Ron was his grandad. “The day my mum found out she was pregnant with me was the day he died, and his name was Ron,” Ramsdale said last year. “He was from Bloxwich in Birmingham and they used to say ‘oh, we’re going to go see our Ron’ or ‘our Barbara’. So I’m Aaron for ‘our Ron’.”
Ugo Monye has just told Mark Chapman on Five Live that Aaron Ramsdale is so named after his father Ron, except that, as they do Up North, he's "Our Ron" - geddit? @Simon_Burnton
— Gary Naylor (@garynaylor999) March 19, 2022
The players are gathering in the tunnel. As I type, Emi Martinez is giving Granit Xhaka a hug.
Some injury news: Callum Chambers has “had some awareness of his muscle”, according to Steven Gerrard. Aaron Ramsdale “will be out for a few weeks”, says Mikel Arteta.
It looks a gorgeous sunny day in Birmingham, cool, bright, and generally perfect for playing, or indeed watching, a game of football.
The teams!
Team news is in, and here it is. Villa make three changes and Arsenal two, the visitors saying Aaron Ramsdale has a hip injury and Gabriel Martinelli is unwell:
Aston Villa: Martinez, Cash, Konsa, Mings, Young, McGinn, Douglas Luiz, Ramsey, Buendia, Watkins, Coutinho. Subs: Sanson, Traore, Chambers, Ings, Olsen, Bailey, Chukwuemeka, Iroegbunam, O’Reilly.
Arsenal: Leno, Cedric, White, Gabriel, Tierney, Odegaard, Partey, Xhaka, Saka, Lacazette, Smith Rowe. Subs: Holding, Pepe, Tavares, Sambi Lokonga, Elneny, Nketiah, Okonkwo, Swanson, Hutchinson.
Referee: Andrew Madley.
This is your Aston Villa team to face Arsenal this afternoon. 👊 #AVLARS pic.twitter.com/Ip5royhfVi
— Aston Villa (@AVFCOfficial) March 19, 2022
📋 Team news from Villa Park...
— Arsenal (@Arsenal) March 19, 2022
🧤 Leno starts in goal
🔄 Smith Rowe in for Martinelli
🇫🇷 Laca leads the line#AVLARS
Hello world!
Well here we are. The game Mikel Arteta complained it was “not fair” for his team to play, what with also having played against Liverpool on Wednesday night. Puzzling outburst, that one. “The first thing is to protect the players and we have mentioned that many times,” he continued. “Please can we avoid the Wednesday night and the Saturday morning and travelling?” Mate, you’ve played at home midweek and then gone to Birmingham. Last week I was at a Spurs game that ended late on a Monday night and had to be in Birmingham by 10am on Tuesday morning. Do you know what? It was absolutely fine, because Birmingham isn’t very far from London. It’s not like it’s Bucharest or Bratislava. “I am not talking about Europe, I am talking about the Premier League and how we schedule the games in the Premier League,” Arteta added. “When you are in Europe it is a different story, but I am talking about the Premier League and it is very different.” Well, a bit different, the main differences being that there’s much less journey time to whinge about and a lot of the teams you have to play are less good.
Anyway, and to summarise, consider Arsenal’s excuses in early.
As for Villa, not since September, when an 88th-minute Kortney Hause goal gave them victory at Old Trafford, have they beaten a current top eight side. Indeed take away Manchester United, whom they also drew with at home in January, and Villa haven’t taken a single point from the top eight teams all season.
“The teams at the top are there for a reason,” said Steven Gerrard. “It’s about consistency, they’ve recruited well, they’ve got experience and some have got managers who have been with them for some time. That’s the area of the league we need to strive for, it’s where we want to be operating of course. I’m very much aware of the stats and those results but tomorrow gives us another opportunity to try to prove that when we’re at our best we can take points off the top teams.”
So in short, Villa want to win and Arsenal want to be somewhere else. Let’s see what happens, shall we?
