What March curse?

We might as well just get ‘Aston Villa’ etched on one of the Wembley changing room doors permanently… after beating Reading 4-2 at the Madejski today, we’re off there again.  We don’t know who we’ll be playing in the FA Cup Semi-Final over the weekend of 10 April and 11 April yet, but the draw will be later today and I’ll update here.

If you ever wanted to see the epitome of football’s oldest cliche; ‘a game of two halves’, this was it. Villa were truly terrible for much of the first half and Reading were good value for their 2-0 lead at the break. Not that Villa didn’t create chances, but most of their play was sloppy to say the least. Errant passes, silly unforced mistakes, lack of movement, disinterest from certain quarters.

By contrast, Reading harried and hussled, at times showing some nice, fluid play. Their first goal came from a corner with the Villa back line unusually all drawn to the ball which was flicked on to an unmarked Shane Long at the far post to make the simplest of headers unchallenged.

The second goal capped off a move that illustrated everything Villa was failing to achieve. Passing, movement, intent, quality. (I should just add “poower” and then you can read that in your best Alan Hansen voice) Shane Long again with the goal; a simple tap in after Villa had been frankly sliced to pieces.

2-0 at the break. Martin O’Neill needed to come up with a special team talk, no doubt with the Ides of March on his mind.

Whatever he said, it worked. The Villa side that came out for the second half could not be more different from the 11 that played the first half. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d say that someone had sent a team of doppelgangers out for the first half and then the real Villa came out to play the second 45 minutes.

Ashley Young looked particularly fired up and seemed determined to find some freedom from all the attention he was getting in the first half, but most noticeably John Carew was now putting himself around and looking to influence the game after spending most of the first half in comparative anonymity. To be fair to big JC and Emile, they were isolated during the first period through a total lack of service. Both Milner and Downing looked different players in the second spell too.

Fittingly then, it was Ash who got the first goal back just 2 minutes into the second half ghosting in unmarked to thump a loose ball into the roof of the net. It was a goal that the build up thoroughly deserved and massively encouraging to see Ash fetch the ball from the net and send the supporters a signal of intent.

John Carew nodded in an unstoppable header to even the scoreline from a wonderful left footed delivery from Stewart Downing on the right. Again, Villa were really showing their quality at this point and thoroughly deserved to get the goal, but it showed the difference it makes when Carew is really interested. It was a brilliantly timed, determined run that saw him surge into the box at just the right time to stamp his authority onto the game. 2-2.

It was Carew again in the 57th minute with a relatively simple tap in, but once again it was the build up play that stretched Reading and created the space. Warnock made a pacy overlapping run past James Milner on the right, as is frequently his style and once he had the ball he dragged it back to the waiting Carew who could hardly have missed. 2-3.

Reading looked shell shocked after such a ruthless lesson in football from the visitors, but all credit to them; they fought back and we had a good old fashion cup tie on our hands. End to end, both teams with chances. Emile Heskey made a run to win the ball just outside the box that you would have thought belonged to Gabby had he been playing. He controlled the ball exquisitely to create a one on one chance with Reading keeper Adam Federici. Unfortunately it was a case of doing the hard part, but failing with the easier bit. That’s quiet a fine summary of Emile Heskey sometimes!

Reading continued to give us problems from corners and MON will want to be looking at why our back line were exposed on a few occasions today, but in the end it was fitting that John Carew was able to get his hat-trick by earning an injury time penalty and thumping the spot kick into the next post code in his usual fashion. 2-4.

So, there we have it. The March curse is lifted. We’re heading to Wembley for the second time this season. We’ve got a very busy, but very winnable Premiership schedule ahead of us. It’s an exciting month ahead!!