Villa 5 Burnley 2
Sunday 21st February 2010, 4:29PM GMT.
Villa turned on the style with four goals in 12 second-half minutes to keep their top-four mission on course.
Ashley Young, a brace from Stewart Downing , Emile Heskey and Gabby Agbonlahor were on target for the claret and blues as they claimed only their second Premier League victory in eight attempts.
Steven Fletcher had put the Clarets ahead after 10 minutes only for Champions League hopefuls Villa to rattle off five goals, while Martin Paterson grabbed an injury-time consolation for Burnley, whose search for their first Premier League away win continues.
But the scoreline failed to tell the whole story, after an inept first-half display from Martin O’Neill’s men.
They trailed when Fletcher arrived unmarked at the back post to punish some sloppy defending but Ashley Young pulled them level in the 31st minute, when his shot took the slightest of deflections off ex-Walsall defender Danny Fox and into the goal.
Villa looked short on ideas and inspiration but it arrived 11 minutes after the break when Downing squeezed a shot inside the far post.
Agbonlahor should have sewn it up two minutes later after being sent clean through only for goalkeeper Brian Jensen to stand up to his clipped effort.
But the ball fell to Downing outside the box and his 20-yard effort – aided by another deflection off the luckless Fox – was too
good for the big keeper.
Then three minutes later Agbonlahor outpaced Clark Carlisle down the left and crossed to leave Heskey with a straightforward tap in.
A blistering 12-minute rout was complete when Heskey played in James Milner on the right side of the box and the midfielder’s cross
was bundled home by Agbonlahor.
Paterson tapped in a consolation effort from close range two minutes into added time, but it did little to take the shine off an otherwise thoroughly pleasing start to Villa’s Carling Cup final week.
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Dismall o,neil at it again with his negative warning about lower teams beating us , its no wonder villa dont start a gams with any confidence, when he warns them its going to be hard to beat them, for g..ds sake man lighten up and enthuse your team get some swagger into them, tell them they should win in style and that what he expects them to do, from the start not be wary of teams, wake up o,neil, or is this the make up of the man who couldnt handle a real star, or sulk when some one stands up to him, lets face it he and his ageing staff are stuck in the sixties with the forest attitude of traning and tactics, they cant even push our so-called englnd players to perform to geton the world cup plane, come on villa get real
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