Following the astonishing 5-5 spectacle at Villa Park midweek, it’s off to the Riverside to take on third-place Middlesbrough. Boro are unbeaten in their last five, and have only lost twice all year, and the obvious statistic of interest is 22 goals scored versus 10 conceded. Villa have netted 36 times, by comparison, and conceded 30.
Aitor Karanka has been saying Forest are very different than small heath, so one assumes we’ll see fewer muggings and more football. For me, at the moment, it’s all about Villa playing Villa’s game. Which, admittedly, is still uncharted territory.
The first home match of the 2018-19 campaign saw the Villa once again come from behind, this time eking out 3-2 result at the expense of visiting Wigan, who must’ve been gutted to to lose at the death. And once again for Villa, no recognized striker was on the score sheet. Still, two games, six points. Not bad.
This summer’s latest installment of Turmoil Villa Style has perhaps been the most incredible episode to date. Just when it looked to be a tragic tale of epic proportions as we discovered how helpless Messiah Tony was in taking Villa forward after his massive gamble failed, Villa get new owners in almost out of the blue. So Villa can now pay the bills. But what about the rest of our problems?
It’s a bit dizzying being up so high in the table. For a day or two, at least. But there we were in second when Aston Villa came up aces in the Second City Derby with second-half goals from Albert Adomah and Conor Hourihane powering the home side to a 2-0 win over small heath.
