Aston Villa 2, Rapid Vienna 3: Mat Kendrick's big match verdict and player ratings
“Your nightmare returns”.
How prophetic and how pathetic.
The threatening taunt on the banner the raucous Rapid Vienna fans unfurled before kick off hinted at what was to come. Your nightmare returns, indeed.
Missed penalties, careless defending ... it’s becoming like Groundhog Day for Villa, especially in the Europa League.
Deja vu, lightning striking twice, call it what you will.
Villa have unforgivably suffered a Rapid elimination at the qualifying stage of this competition for the second successive season.
Sadly, not only have the claret and blues not learned from their own mistakes, Kevin MacDonald, thoroughly good clubman though he undoubtedly is, has failed to learn from Martin O’Neill’s mistakes. The caretaker boss has made some bold decisions during his three weeks in the Villa hot-seat and at first he could do no wrong.
But his calculated gamble to rest some of Villa’s big-hitters – Richard Dunne, Stephen Warnock, and Luke Young – for last night’s crucial clash spectacularly backfired.
And now the big decision – namely does he want to manage Aston Villa Football Club – could now be taken out of MacDonald’s hands.
It started so well for Villa with Gabby Agbonlahor riding to the rescue by putting them in front on 22 minutes after overcoming his back/hamstring problem.
Stiliyan Petrov played in Ashley Young down the right and his early cross tempted Agbonlahor to slide in at the near post and open his account for the season.
Villa looked quite comfortable before the break and could have scored more had the returning James Collins been able to direct his header on target from a corner from Young who also threatened with two free-kicks.
Stephen Ireland’s home debut could hardly have been any worse than his away bow and he almost capped an encouraging first half performance with a goal, only to be tackled by Markus Heikkinen as he shaped to shoot.
After keeping Rapid quiet for most of the opening period Villa were confident of it being their night, even when Agbonlahor limped off just before the break – this time hampered by a calf strain. But when Vienna failed to capitalise upon a slip from Collins the Holte End’s only concern was getting out of the way of Yasin Pehlivan’s wayward shot.
How quickly things change.
For some reason more and more anxiety crept into the claret and blues’ play at the start of the second half and they were punished when Atdhe Nuhiu was gifted an equaliser after Habib Beye’s complacency.
