Wow!! I’m still recovering from this one folks… and I’m going to watch it again as soon as I’m finished with this, only this time I won’t be chewing my nails off!!

There’s so much to say, I hardly know where to start. Firstly, I suppose, it’s been 14 years since we’ve taken all three points from Man Utd. 14 years!! I’m tempted to point out to MON’s detractors and other McExperts among the Villa fan base that not only did we beat Man Utd at their place, but we did it playing 4-4-2. Not only that, but Utd played 4-5-1 for the first half!! There’s plenty of time for that sort of smugness though.

It might have been a good time to play Utd, but that wasn’t the weakest of sides they could have put out by a long shot and they did manage to comfortably do numbers on both West Ham and Wolfsburg away in the last week. No, take nothing away from Aston Villa, they had to play some football today.

Gabby’s goal was the difference between the teams, sublimely supplied by Ash on the left, despite the best efforts of Rooney, Owen and Berbatov for most of the second half. It took an heroic effort from every single player in the white away shirts to hold the home team off. It’s impossible to find a weak link among the Villa players, without fault, all of them gave the necessary 100% required to secure the historic victory.

I bet the atmosphere on the team coach heading back to Birmingham will be buzzing. That’s an addictive feeling, hopefully massively habit forming. The team will arrive home knowing that, for now at least, they are third in a very competitive Premiership, and that they’ve got the depth and talent in the squad to keep this pace up.

There will be much more to follow on this game I’m sure, but for now consider that this team have beaten Liverpool at Anfield, Chelsea at Villa Park and now Manchester Utd at Old Trafford. How much for the full set when we travel to Arsenal on December 27th?

We’ve got a seriously good side on our hands here folks and they have fantastic team spirit. With a little good fortune along the way, a strong Winter, limited injuries, we could well be challenging the sharp end of the table when the Spring comes around.

It’s a bit early to be thinking ‘Yes We Can’ just yet, let’s just soak this victory in, but we can certainly start believing that this team is the real deal!!

And finally, just for fun – I switched over to the Spanish sports channel earlier and they were playing the game on delay. I couldn’t resist rewinding to the commentary of Gabby’s goal. There’s no “Gooooooooooaaaaaaaaalllllllllllll” I’m afraid, but it’s still fun…

[wpaudio url=”https://astonvillacentral.com/audio/gabby_goal_spanish.mp3″]

Oh, and I should really let this guy have another word…