Blackburn Rovers 2, Aston Villa 1: Mat Kendrick's big match verdict
Sep 28 2009 by Mathew Kendrick, Birmingham Mail
However, it was his former Liverpool and Blackburn colleague Friedel who was top of the class on a day when the report cards of most of his outfield team-mates read: Must do better.
The American veteran stuck his arm up faster than a teacher’s pet answering a simple question to somehow claw away ex-Bluenose David Dunn’s acrobatic effort around the half-hour mark and then thwarted substitute Brett Emerton with a fine second-half save as he tried to, quite literally, keep Blackburn at bay single-handedly.
Sadly, Villa collectively had no answer to the constant bombardment of their box and ironically it was someone called Samba who ultimately knocked them out of their rhythm of six straight wins and prevented them from achieving their best start to a season for 79 years.
Christopher Samba was probably the only person in the entire ground bigger than John Carew and the strapping 6ft 4ins centre-half’s presence on Dunne’s shoulder seemed to panic the Irish international.
When Samba’s partner Ryan Nelsen aimed a hopeful punt forward, Villa’s central pairing committed the cardinal sin of allowing it to bounce on the edge of the box and Dunne compounded the error by nodding the ball into the path of the Congolese colossus for a clinical finish past Friedel.
The equaliser offered a new lease of life to a Blackburn side who had taken just four points from their previous five games and, even after they were reduced to ten men on 68 minutes when Vince Grella followed his tug on Agbonlahor by clattering into Milner, Villa failed to silence the re-energised Rovers fans by capitalising on their numerical advantage.
Instead Blackburn continued to lump high balls into the Villa area and finally got the breakthrough a minute from time when Di Santo’s overhead kick struck the raised arm of Dunne whose protests of ‘ball-to-hand’ and angry swearwords were ignored as referee Mark Clattenburg pointed to the spot with Dunn confidently converting the controversially-awarded penalty.
