After resisting an opening onslaught at St Mary’s, Joleon Lescott’s first goal for the club he supported as a kid, got some Villa fans dreaming of a huge three points. While it was disappointing to concede an equaliser from a corner, a point was a seemingly satisfactory result.
An away point at St. Mary’s is normally a decent result under normal circumstances, but when you see fellow relegation strugglers Bournemouth and Newcastle beat Chelsea and Liverpool respectively, it gives you the context of what Villa are going to have to do to survive. Next week’s home game against Arsenal is as ‘must win’ as any other game.
While we wait for that, here’s five reasons to be cheerful as Villa fans…
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2. OLYMPIAKOS
Before visiting Villa Park on Sunday, Arsenal have to make a trip to Greece for their Champion’s League game vs Olympiakos. It’s a game they have to go all out to win to have any chance of qualifying, so Wenger will play his full-strength team.
If there was a good time to play Arsenal, it has to be now, considering the pile of injuries they have in the squad – including Santi Cazorla, Alexis Sánchez, Francis Coquelin, Jack Wilshere, Mikel Arteta, Tomas Rosicky and Danny Welbeck.
(Actually, trotting that list of injuries out is quite scary when you consider any one of those would probably be Villa’s best player, if they played for us.)
With the lack of options to freshen up his team, Wenger also wouldn’t consider the early kick-off on Sunday as ideal either.
Having said that, Villa must turn up this time, since they failed to do at Wembley. As Bournemouth and Newcastle have shown this weekend, games against the big teams can serve up three points, if the attitude is there to have a go and there’s a belief it’s possible to win.
The Villa Park crowd have to really go for it too and try to unsettle the visitors. There should be none of this, ‘Well, there’s winnable games after Arsenal’ mentality. At the moment, there’s no such thing as a winnable game, so in trying to get our first win for 14 games, the next game is always the best one to do it in, no matter the opponent.
Marc albrighton was one of the best crossers of the ball at the club i had seen since ashley young left for manchester united ! Lambert you fool