Matt Maher analysis: Stunning Aston Villa success shows the giant really is stirring
Even before kick-off Unai Emery was proclaiming this match a big one in Villa’s season.
It sure felt like it.
After a somewhat jumbled start to the campaign, where mostly decent league results have jarred against the odd shocker and a couple of cup stumbles, here came beautiful clarity.
Villa 6 Brighton 1 was the kind of afternoon to set supporters dreaming maybe, just maybe, Unai Emery’s team really are going to live up to the pre-season hype. Those banners hanging on the Trinity Road gates, proclaiming the giant to be awake, may be no mere marketing slogan.
Villa’s biggest league win for nearly three years – and their largest with supporters in the ground since 2018 – sent them soaring over Brighton in the table, a three-point and eight-goal deficit reversed in little more than 100 minutes of football. A statement delivered in the most stunning of styles.
The finest victory of Emery’s reign to date was driven by one of the best performances by a Villa centre-forward in recent memory.
Jason Steele’s late save might have prevented Ollie Watkins from matching the four goals scored by Tammy Abraham against Nottingham Forest in 2018. Yet not since Christian Benteke’s hat-trick salvaged a precious 3-3 draw with QPR in 2015 has a striker so emphatically taken control of proceedings.
