Aston Villa 1 Everton 0
Sunday 29th August 2010, 6:01PM BST.
Villa returned to winning ways as Luke Young’s early strike sealed a tense victory at Villa Park.
Right-back Young netted with a delightful curling strike after just nine minutes as Kevin MacDonald’s side bounced back from disappointing defeats to Newcastle and Rapid Vienna over the last week.
However, the claret and blues had to dig deep to secure the three points after withstanding a barrage of pressure from the Toffees over the 90 minutes.
The win at least meant Villa ended a poor week on a high note and owner Randy Lerner now has two weeks to find a new manager before the Villans travel to Stoke for their next game a fortnight tomorrow.
Villa took an early lead when John Carew found Ashley Young on the edge of the area and his clever through-ball sent namesake Luke through for him to curl a wonderful left-footed shot high into the far corner.
But the claret and blues found themselves on the back foot for the rest of the opening 45 minutes and could count themselves lucky when Steven Pienaar curled against the crossbar after 17 minutes before Jermaine Beckford eventually blazed over.
Villa upped the tempo in the second half and on 60 it took a fine reaction save from Tim Howard to claw away Ashley Young’s close-range effort after the ball had dropped invitingly for the England winger.
A minute later Villa had keeper Brad Friedel to thank when he made a brilliant save from point-blank range to keep out a Louis Saha effort before the ball bounced off James Collins and away to safety.
Marc Albrighton should have made it two when Howard’s parry from an Ashley Young cross fell kindly to him but the young winger skewed his effort past the post.
It proved inconsequential, however, as MacDonald’s men survived a nervy five minutes of added time which included another fine Friedel save from Saha to maintain their 100% record at home in the Premier League.
UK Sport
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