Aston Villa held Newcastle United to a 0-0 draw on Saturday, with Ezri Konsa’s second-half dismissal leaving us with 10 men for the latter stages.
Eddie Howe’s men were the better side in the first half and had big chances to break the deadlock, but ultimately failed to do so and that saw Villa improve after the break to show a bit more of a threat of our own.
READ MORE: What Unai Emery said in assessment of Villa’s goalless draw vs Newcastle Utd
Unfortunately, it didn’t last long as Konsa’s red card forced us into a more defensive set-up after the 66th minute, but to our credit, we showed good organisation and resilience to hold out for a hard-fought point, and in turn continued our impressive home form having now gone 22 games undefeated at Villa Park.
Unai Emery will undoubtedly want to see improvement next week at Brentford, but given how this game played out, although he was disappointed with the outcome, he’ll accept that it was decent point to start the campaign.
Aston Villa player ratings vs Newcastle United
Marco Bizot, 8 – A brilliant debut from the Dutchman, as he made a decisive early save to deny Anthony Elanga, and went on to make key stops and dealt with danger in his box well throughout. Clean sheet, did his job impressively.
Matty Cash, 6 – Decent defensive shift as he worked hard to limit Newcastle’s threat down that side, but wasn’t accurate enough in possession, particularly when trying ambitious long diagonal passes. Didn’t do Konsa any favours either in the lead up to his red card after a weak cross set Newcastle off on their counter attack.
Ezri Konsa, 5 – Looked hesitant at times which caused confusion in the backline, and his afternoon ended early after he was sent off for his foul on Anthony Gordon as he closed in on goal having broken our offside line.
Tyrone Mings, 6 – Made plenty of clearances and gave us a commanding presence in defence, but we looked vulnerable on a number of occasions and lacked composure when trying to build play out from the back.
Lucas Digne, 6 – Poor defensive work led to Elanga’s early chance, but he battled well after that to try and contain the Newcastle winger. Limited going forward though given he had his hands full from a defensive perspective and Villa struggled to play with any real quality.
Boubacar Kamara, 7.5 – From a defensive perspective, he was excellent, be it as a midfielder or a centre-half for the final half hour. Made key tackles and gave us presence, but much like the rest of the team, his passing was wayward too often and that led to our struggles in possession.
Amadou Onana, 7 – Worked tirelessly off the ball and used his physical attributes to give us a vital presence in midfield and gain some sort of foothold in the encounter. However, he too was wasteful with the ball as we just couldn’t show anywhere near enough quality on the ball.
John McGinn, 6 – As ever, the Villa skipper was a bundle of energy and put himself about early on to try and get the crowd into it. He was an important outlet at times to relieve pressure, but much like the rest of his teammates, he couldn’t offer enough when he had possession.
Youri Tielemans, 6 – This was arguably a perfect example of why we need the Belgian orchestrator in a deeper midfield role to pull the strings and break the lines of pressing to get us on our way into attack. His influence wasn’t felt as much in a more advanced role, and Villa struggled to get any rhythm or quality in our play.
Morgan Rogers, 6 – Although the referee seemingly didn’t want to give him any free-kicks in this game, he was wasteful and sloppy in possession too often and couldn’t give us that bit of quality needed to unlock the Newcastle defence. Surely need to see him operate centrally moving forward, but we need to be sharper and more accurate to make a decisive impact.
Ollie Watkins, 6 – Worked tirelessly off the ball to try and press the Newcastle defence into mistakes, and his movement was key to giving us an option up top to try and build an attack of simply relieve pressure. Didn’t have enough service to be more of a threat as he didn’t have too many sights of goal.
Substitutes:
Donyell Malen, N/A
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