The Times - UK (2020-07-27)

8 2GG Monday July 27 2020 | the times

thegame Battle for survival The winners

having already forged a path through

their own angst. At the final whistle,

the Villa players and staff formed an

enormous huddle to wait for news

from Arsenal and then celebrated

Watford’s defeat.

In some respects, it was already a

triumph that Villa’s fate was in their

own hands on the last day such has

been their unravelling in their season

following promotion via the play-offs.

They spent big and offloaded with

brutality, but they rarely clicked and

along the way suffered key injuries.

John McGinn, man of the match in

the play-off final at Wembley, broke

his ankle before Christmas and the

goals dried up. The main reason Villa

had hope at the London Stadium was

that Dean Smith had shored up the

defence, having made its improvement

his lockdown project, so that Villa

arrived in the capital unbeaten in

three games, conceding just the one

goal in their draw with Everton.

“It means a lot,” Smith said,

beer in hand. “I was brought

up as a Villa fan. This feels

better than last year than going

up through the play-offs.

We had to build a

squad and a culture.”

It could so easily

have been West Ham

in a last-gasp effort

to stay up in the

David Cameron derby.

David Moyes, though,

engineered a breakthrough

just in time and his team forged some

excellent performances, not allowing

the defeats by Wolverhampton

Wanderers and Tottenham Hotspur

immediately after the restart to

dampen their optimism and they

confirmed their Premier League

status with a draw against

Manchester United on Wednesday.

West Ham may be a club fractured

by fan disillusionment but are led by a

unifying long-serving captain. It is

rare for the captain’s message in the

club programme to be worthy of more

than a passing glance but in his notes

for the last game of the season Mark

Noble said: “I think about West Ham

in almost every spare moment,

whether I’m driving to training or

doing jobs around the house.”

Pepe Reina said this was one of the

biggest challenges of his long and

eventful career and the Villa

goalkeeper became increasingly loud

in his directions to his team-

mates as the game progressed.

Smith’s team began to retreat in

the manner of someone forced

to go to a party where the

food, music and

conversation are not to

their liking but the

home side failed to

punish their hesitancy.

Jack Grealish and

Ryan Fredericks were

Make no mistake, this was a

monumental effort by Aston Villa. To

avoid relegation they had to go four

games unbeaten for the first time this

season and although they were so

nervous at times that they almost

forgot to move, they held firm to

secure their place in the Premier

League.

Villa had lost nine successive games

in London before this encounter and

were perhaps fortunate that West

Ham United had little to prove,

On the day that could have ended
with Danny Ings holding the Golden
Boot, Southampton’s less prominent
frontman took the plaudits. It had
taken Che Adams 30 appearances to
get his first goal in the red-and-white
stripes, but his double in this victory
over Sheffield United at St Mary’s
ensured both he and Southampton
finished the season strongly.
It was a neat summary of
Southampton’s season, with Ralph
Hasenhüttl’s side recovering from a
troubling start to end impressively.
John Lundstram put Chris Wilder’s
side ahead after Jannik Vestergaard’s
mistake, before a second-half
comeback in which Adams struck
twice and Ings converted a late
penalty, leaving him on 22 goals,
one short of top scorer Jamie Vardy.

Ings had played selflessly,
as Hasenhüttl was keen
to point out. “He showed
today he cared more
about the team,” the
Southampton manager
said. “This is for me more
important than winning
the golden shoe.”
In a season that included
the infamous 9-0 defeat by
Leicester City, Hasenhüttl’s
side ended 11th in the
league and unbeaten
in seven. “Amazing,
especially after
lockdown, what
we did was unbelievable,”
Hasenhüttl said.
“The way we play at the
moment, it is not a coincidence
we win games. You see the team
are learning quickly and the
wins give you confidence. There
is no pressure at the moment but
we must play like this when there is

pressure.” That neither side needed a

win was testament to their seasons.

Wilder was disappointed to end the

campaign with three defeats but his

team still managed a top-ten finish.

“We are disappointed with the way

we finished but hopefully people will

judge us on our positive,” Wilder said.

“We’ve attacked the division, and the

majority of the time we have played

the way we wanted to play.”

Wilder named only eight out of a

possible nine substitutes owing to

injuries and he expressed a need to

strengthen in the summer: “We need

to improve if we want to compete in

this division. Everyone else will.”

Billy Sharp, the captain, was among

four new faces in Wilder’s line-up

after defeat by Everton on Monday.

At 34, though, Sharp is an old face in

the side and it was his late equaliser

against Bournemouth on August 10

last year that began this remarkable

campaign. He came close early on

after outrunning Vestergaard, before

Alex McCarthy smothered.

Ten minutes later the Dane was at

fault once again. This time it cost

Southampton. Enda Stevens’s cross

looked to be a simple clearance for

Vestergaard but it slipped under his

boot and Lundstram reacted quickest.

That only Liverpool and

Manchester City have conceded

fewer goals this season suggested a

comeback would not be easy.

After a counterattack Sharp crossed

from the left, the ball falling just

behind Oliver McBurnie but into

Lundstram’s path. He struck it hard

and well, but McCarthy matched it.

“They should have been put to

bed,” Wilder said. “Obviously it has

been a long old season and it looked

like we’d run our race.”

Southampton had struggled to

impose themselves, and it took a

touch of fortune for the equaliser.

When Sander Berge went sliding in to

control the ball his intervention sent

it into his own box and into the path

of Adams, whose powerful drive beat

Dean Henderson at his near post.

A late intervention prevented

Southampton from falling behind

when Oriol Romeu saved McCarthy’s

blushes after a misplaced pass, but

then stopped them taking the lead.

Jack Robinson challenged just in time

when Adams connected with James

Ward-Prowse’s header from

six yards out.

Adams had a taste for goal

now, though, so when

Kyle Walker-

Peters’s shot

rebounded

off Chris

Basham and

into his path he

finished clinically

past Henderson.

Southampton had

relied on Ings’s

goals this season,

but here was a sign

that Adams would now

be chipping in.

But this was the day Ings

needed the goals. A neat touch in

the box lured substitute Oliver

Norwood to lunge in and send

Ings tumbling. Referee Peter

Bankes pointed to the spot

and Ings powered home.

Adams leads

comeback for

Southampton

31

Adams 50, 71

Ings 84 (pen)

Lundstram 26

RATINGS

Southampton (4-2-2-2): A McCarthy 7 — K Walker-

Peters 7, J Vestergaard 5, J Stephens 6, R Bertrand

6 — O Romeu 7 (M Obafemi 90min), J Ward-

Prowse 7 — S Armstrong 6 (W Smallbone 30, 6),

N Redmond 6 — D Ings 7, C Adams 8 (S Long 85).

Sheffield United (3-5-2): D Henderson 6 —

C Basham 7 (O Norwood 80), J Egan 7, J Robinson

7 — G Baldock 6, J Lundstram 7, S Berge 6, J Fleck

6, E Stevens 7 — B Sharp 6 (L Clarke 68, 6),

O McBurnie 6 (R Zivkovic 51, 6). Booked Stevens.

Referee P Bankes.

Southampton Sheffield

United

TOM RODDY

b

b

Adams scored twice to complete
Southampton’s comeback, doubling
his tally for the season to four

11

Yarmolenko 85 Grealish 84

RATINGS

West Ham United (4-2-3-1): L Fabianski 6 —

R Fredericks 5, I Diop 6, O Ogbonna 6, B Johnson

7 — T Soucek 7, D Rice 6 — J Bowen 6

(A Yarmolenko 46min, 7), M Noble 8 (F Anderson

87), P Fornals 6 (M Lanzini 67, 5) — M Antonio 6

(S Haller 46, 6). Booked Antonio, Fredericks.

Aston Villa (4-3-3): J Reina 6 — F Guilbert 6

(K Hause 76) E Konsa 6, T Mings 6, M Targett 5 —

J McGinn 7, Douglas Luiz 6, C Hourihane 6

(M Nakamba 76) — Trézéguet 7 (A El Ghazi 90),

M Samatta 6 (K Davis 67), J Grealish 7. Booked

Samatta.

Referee M Oliver.

West Ham

United

Aston Villa

ALYSON RUDD

Villa master the

Grealish, the

Villa captain,

centre, enjoys

the moment

of his side

taking the lead

Stat of the season

22
Goals for Danny Ings, making him the
third Southampton player to have a
20-goal Premier League season after
Matt Le Tissier and James Beattie

Smith shares an embrace

with Frédéric Guilbert