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Key events
25 minutes: “The first time I met footballers carrying their children was at a cup final,” emails Neil Tully. “The interviewer asked a player, ‘can he talk now?’ The child replied ‘no, but he’s fine.’
GOAL! Aston Villa 1-2 Liverpool (Gakpo 23)
Stuck or forward?! Classic curse of MBMers, there. Villa’s defense is all over the store. Gomes crosses from left-back and suddenly the hosts are exposed on the right. Gomez shoots first time, Martinez can only get a finger on the effort and Gakpo hits the back post. There is a VAR check for an offside with Gomez, but after a long delay the goal is awarded!
21 minutes: Quansah makes another block, this time from Bailey! Liverpool I’m sticking around a bit here.
19 minutes: Konsa makes a sensational slide shot against Gakpo on the edge of the area and Villa break! Bailey slips in Watkins, who overcomes the ambush, fires on goal… but Quansach comes back to make a crucial block. Credit to the young Liverpool defender there, but Watkins rather lingered on his shot.
17 minutes: After a really poor start to the match, Villa is now a biker. Bailly and Diaby pocket the ball in the space between the midfield and take a corner, with Van Dijk heading the former clear of danger.
15 minutes: It’s another assist for Watkins – no one has more than her Premier League this season. Add that to his 19 league goals and it’s a season for a generation.
GOAL! Aston Villa 1-1 Liverpool (Tillemans 13)
The villa is on a level! For the first time tonight, Watkins finds some space on the left flank. He ghosts past Quansah – really poor from Liverpool defender – returns the ball to the penalty spot where an uncovered Tielemans is waiting. The Belgian hits first time through a crowd of bodies and into the net!
12 minutes: Liverpool hit the crossbar! Dine is in the sea at left-back and Salah crosses beautifully to Diaz. The Colombian’s header is saved and Gakpo’s ricochet hits the post! Replays showed that Diaz was in fact ambushed, but neither Villa nor Liverpool knew that.
10 minutes: Villa’s first substantial attack, as Diaby makes a good run to the byline, cuts the ball back to Bailey, but the Jamaican fails to fire a fairly easy shot with his weaker right foot/swinger. A good chance wasted!
8 minutes: “Many, many horrific debts paid off,” emails Charles Antaki. “Can someone take Martinez aside and whisper gently in his ear, ‘karma’.”
I’m not sure I agree with the “awfulness”. The World Cup crotch was a bit much, but overall I’m quite enjoying Martinez’s antics.
6 minutes: Martinez and Neuer have claims to be the best goalkeepers in the world. Both have put up terrible fights in the last week.
4 minutes: It’s not nearly 2-0! Inches wide for Salah, who runs inside Dine with supreme ease and fires at the far post. Once again it falls to Pau Torres, but this time it deflects just wide of Martinez’s post. The Villa keeper wouldn’t have made it that far if he had snuck onto the post.
GOAL! Aston Villa 0-1 Liverpool (Martinez and 2)
Terrible start for Villa! Elliott plays a one-two with Salah and crosses from the byline. It hits Pau Torres, but it’s a pretty decent catch for Martinez… but the World Cup winner drops the ball and then accidentally pushes it into his own net as he tries to retrieve the loose ball!
Peeeeeep! We’re going to the West Midlands.
The teams are out! Villa players bring their own children with them. Most of the kids have “Daddy” written on their backs, which is pretty cute. I’m not quite sure what the reason for their presence is though.
Villa fans, what did you do with Nicolò Zaniolo this season? I haven’t looked closely, but from what I’ve seen the midfielder has been unimpressive and looks set to return to Galatasaray after his loan spell ends, with Villa reportedly opting not to pay the £23.2 buy option clause million. Fiorentina have been linked with a return to Italy.
Zaniolo was such a talent when he joined Roma before a knee injury and contract issues derailed him slightly. But there’s still definitely a player there, and he’s still only 24.
John McGinnthe Villa captain, was speaking ahead of tonight’s game.
I think we owe the supporters a performance. We owe ourselves a performance after the efforts of the whole season, the graft is coming every day. It was a long hard season with a lot [games] on the way, but we should certainly be proud. We don’t want to stop. We know what we have to do. It is in our hands.
Tom Hanks is a good eggisn’t he
Football Weekly landedfor your listening pleasure.
Jurgen Klopp needs to be on his best behavior tonight. If not, there could be a rather awkward end to his reign at Anfield on Sunday – Klopp has been booked twice this season, against Burnley on February 10 and Luton on November 5, and a third at Villa Park would have brought an automatic touchline ban for his last match.
The teams!
Aston Villa: Martinez, Konza, Diego Carlos, Torres, Digne, Tielemans, Douglas Lewis, Bailly, McGinn, Diaby, Watkins.
subtitles: Chambers, Lenglet, Zaniolo, Duran, Olsen, Kessler-Hayden, Iroegbunam, Munroe, Kelliman.
Liverpool: Alisson, Alexander-Arnold, Quansach, Van Dijk, Gomes, Elliott, Endo, McAllister, Salah, Gakpo, Diaz.
subtitles: Konate, Soboslay, Nunez, Jones, Tsimikas, Gravenberch, Bajcetic, Kelleher, Bradley.
Referee: Simon Hooper (Wiltshire)
Preamble
Usually the end of a Premier League season would mean heaps of permutations at the top and bottom of the table and for the teams fighting for Europe. But the relegation battle is now over, with both City and Arsenal needing to win their remaining games to have any chance of the title, and the top four are sewn up almost sewn up.
Win against Liverpool tonight and Aston Villa will claim a place in the top tier of European football for the first time in over 40 years. The last time Villa played in the European Cup, they reached the quarter-finals against Juventus in 1983. as defending champions. Hard days, but it’s been a long time.
On paper, Liverpool not much to play with. Win, lose or draw, third place is assured. But with a new manager coming in, many of Liverpool’s squad are playing for their future. Former Liverpool sporting director Julian Ward has joined the club’s ownership group 12 months after leaving Anfield, while former Benfica technical director Pedro Marquez has been appointed director of football development. Both will work with Michael Edwards, Liverpool’s chief executive of football, and all three will be key to the incoming and outgoing positions. The point is, especially with the international selection for Euro 2024, no player can rest on their laurels.
Oh, and it’s Jurgen Klopp’s last away game as Liverpool manager. But you already knew that.
Kickoff: 20:00 BST.
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