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MOTD: Aston Villa 2-1 Liverpool
At times, Aston Villa looked nothing short of Barcelona, making Liverpool appear silly. The speed and creativity leading to Villa’s second goal would have made Pep Guardiola cheer. Yet today’s result was not only a testament to the performances of players like Jack Grealish, Christian Benteke, Fabian Delph, and frankly the entire Villa squad, as it well also a result of Liverpool’s failures. Steven Gerrard’s age once again caught up with him: Liverpool could no longer rely on the Englishman to dominate the midfield, and with Daniel Sturridge sidelined. Raheem Sterling didn’t have the freedom to drop back into the midfield.
The loss signaled that the end of Gerrard’s Liverpool reign has run its course; but while he departs for Hollywood there will be no fairy-tale ending to his Liverpool career. In all likelihood the club are now too far back to finish in the top four in the league and Gerrard has lost his last chance of silverware as Villa booked a place in the FA Cup final at Wembley. The so-called date of destiny, the FA Cup final coinciding with Gerrard’s thirty-fifth birthday, overshadowed that fact that they still had to beat Villa.
Tactically, Tim Sherwood worked a miracle. He kept to a simplistic approach, centered around the target-man, Benteke, who fed the ball to the overlapping runs of Delph, Charles N’Zogbia, and Grealish. Only nineteen, Grealish played with the fearlessness of youth and surged forward down the left in the thirty-fifth minute before feeding the overlapping run of Delph, who cut it back for Benteke to finish in the middle. All with such incisive speed and a clinical touch, Liverpool were left on their heels and Rodgers running out of ideas.
Brendan Rodgers struggled to fix his issues in the middle, with Joe Allen and Gerrard struggling to get Sterling on the ball. On one of the few occasions Sterling did, it resulted in a goal: he slipped in through to the overlapping run of Philippe Coutinho in the eighteenth minute, and the Brazilian clipped it over Shay Given and into the back if the net. Quickly, however, Villa wrestled control of the match. Sterling’s support vaporized, and Mario Balotelli’s halftime substitution met an ill-fated demise.
Fifty-four minutes in, on another quick break, Grealish cut inside from Benteke’s backheel and met Delph’s run with a reverse pass. Delph’s ingenious first touch shook off Emre Can and Dejan Lovren, and buried a shot past Given with his second.
As the match wore into its latter stages Villa retreated further and further, but Liverpool could not find an equalizer. Balotelli had a goal ruled out for offsides — Liverpool fans argue he was marginally on — and Gerrard saw a near post header cleared by the man on the far post, but in the last moments Lovren blasted a wasteful thirty-five yard effort.
Man of the Match: Christian Benteke
Homepage photo credit: Biser Todorov on Wikipedia Commons