Aston Villa’s Di Canio Demolition Sets Up Norwich Test


Aston Villa’s Di Canio Demolition Sets Up Norwich Test

I’m sure there are tougher jobs than being a football journalist, but it does carry with it a certain degree of stress. For most of the season, I’ve had to make silk purses out of the sow’s ears of Aston Villa performances, and what do I get? Mild admiration from friends and family, that’s what. Now I’m expected to remain realistic about our last three games following the titanic win over Sunderland; an about-face that’s capable of giving me whiplash. It’s hardly fair.

Actually, it’s probably for the best I’ve given myself a few of days’ reflection on events, because a match report after the best game we’ve played this season would have been little more than jabbering nonsense. For most of Tuesday, whenever I passed a place that sold newspapers, it was all I could do not to stand there looking at Christian Benteke uprooting a corner flag and gurgling. So now it’s a respectable amount of time after the final whistle, I’m attempting to be objective.

But still, there’s little chance of that. For Aston Villa fans, Monday night was like listening to your favourite song for the first time, watching the closing moments of the best movie ever made. From the crashing piledriver of Ron Vlaar’s first Villa goal onwards, it was a highlight reel of everything that the fan wants their team to achieve. It had peril (Danny Rose’s fine equaliser), artistry (Matt Lowton’s world-class ball to the feet of Andi Weimann), special effects (Christian Benteke’s gravity-defying header for his second goal), a hero and villain (Benteke the destroyer of worlds, Stephane Sessegnon the terrible cad) and even a happy ending (Gabriel Agbonlahor becoming Villa’s all-time Premier League top-scorer).

So yes, it was special, and after what seemed to be a never-ending winter followed by a spring where all our relegation rivals woke up to their own perilous situations, how Villa fans deserved it. Aston Villa fans do not have something special in their DNA: they are ordinary people, albeit ones who made an extraordinary choice. But even at the team’s most desperate moments this season, Villa Park has seen an average of thirty thousand plus in attendance. The same fans who have taken crowing abuse following record defeats at Chelsea, merciless stick from all sides after losing to Bradford City and mockery from cocky rivals across the season deserved to see their team earn a breathtaking victory.

The headlines were taken by Christian Benteke because of his first hat-trick in English football, and I take no issue with that. But it was the manner in which Villa applied their exuberance and team ethic which will live long in the memory. Aside from a shaky opening, Aston Villa channelled the frantic energy and talent at a startled Sunderland, who had no doubt been drilled into trying to tire players for a second-half rollover. But even before they lost Sessegnon, Sunderland looked jaded, and you could see Paolo Di Canio shrink inside his soaking suit as Villa’s movement and purpose showed what a team playing for a manager, rather than being scared of one, can do.

It’s worth repeating that it’s fine for the fans to be overconfident after seeing at least half the side put in a man of the match performance, but the job to avoid the drop is incomplete for the team. Had Aston Villa been tasked to play Norwich City straight after the Sunderland demolition, you feel they would have swept them aside too, but as the adrenalin dissipates, it’s back to a tough away fixture both sides need to win.

Paul Lambert will not look to make any changes after the Sunderland victory, and that’s his greatest weapon in his return to Carrow Road. You can imagine Manchester United swatting an excitable Villa aside, but Norwich have looked nervous for weeks, and will need to put three men on Christian Benteke, who will look about eight feet tall as he strides onto the pitch. Shame that Weimann and Agbonlahor netted on Monday then; after a season in danger, Aston Villa look dangerous instead, and any kind of victory will surely see the club safe from relegation.

Chris Stanley

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