Aston Villa 1 Leeds United 1

 A couple of months ago this would probably have been considered an easy win for Villa, but since then Leeds have improved and Villa after suffering injuries to the midfield 3 of McGinn, Kamara and Tielemans have suffered some poor results including 3 home defeats at the usually impenetrable Villa Park. Villa are still in third but Leeds after a poor start to the season have really started to improve.

The first half was a bit of  a battle in the middle of the park with both sides lacking a cutting edge, although Leeds' forward Dominic Calvert-Lewin seemed to have more about him than Watkins when chances were created. It was Leeds who opened the scoring when Watkins fouled a Leeds player and  Anton Stach fired home to put the visitors in the lead. It was a great free kick, but there need to be some questions asked about Martinez's positioning for it and what Watkins was doing back there giving a gree kick away in that position.

The second half saw an onslaught from Aston Villa but they still seemed to lack a cutting edge as Leeds smothered the onslaught. Something needed to change and that change came about just after the hour mark. Ross Barkley came on for Amadou Onana; Jadon Sancho for Leon Bailey and Lamare Bogarde for Douglas Luiz.

Sancho immediately offered something different to Bailey and had more luck getting balls into the box, but unfortunately nobody was getting on the end of them. Barkely also did well picking out a number of key passes, that on another day would have seen somebody finish them clinically. However much Villa battled, they couldn't seem to get level though.

Emery needed another throw of the dice and despite his aversion to playing two upfront he did this on 75 minutes when he subbed Emi Buendia off to bring on Tammy Abraham. It was the throw of the dice that paid dividends, although maybe he should have thrown it before! With 4 minutes remaining a corner was met by Ezri Konsa who got a flick on for Abraham to get a real poachers goal.

Stoppage time was frantic, but Leeds held on and the game finished 1-1






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