Reading 2, Aston Villa 4: Mat Kendrick's big match verdict
Mar 8 2010 By Mat Kendrick
NEVER mind Beware the Ides of March, the only thing football needs to beware is another Villa march to the Arch after Martin O’Neill’s Carling Cup runners-up came roaring back in the FA Cup.
John Carew’s storming secondhalf hat-trick and an Ashley Young strike – three of the goals coming during an amazing 11-minute burst – means O’Neill has banished his curse of never having won in the third calendar month of the year with Villa.
An.d more importantly it means, so soon after last Sunday’s Carling hangover, the home of football will be decked out in claret and blue once again for a last-four tie against Chelsea next month.
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After emerging from a blockbuster quarter-final against plucky Reading at the Madejski Stadium yesterday, Villa will believe their name is on the cup this season after all – domestic football’s premier knockout competition no less.
O’Neill’s Wembley-bound wonders produced a rip-roaring second half performance which was every bit as good as the first half was bad after coming from two-goals down to triumph 4-2 in the archetypal game of two halves.
Quite what words of inspiration O’Neill conjured up during his half-time team-talk only the Villa players will know but they were in stark contrast to whatever his Royals counterpart Brian McDermott said.
Because Carew and co were unrecognisable after the break as they sent their 4,000 army of travelling fans home deliriously happy and braced for another frantic scramble for golden Wembley tickets. With their chants of “2-0 and you messed it up” (yes, their words were a little ruder than that), the vocal Villa fans succinctly summed up how the game was transformed so amazingly between minutes 47 and 58.
At 2.30pm, the claret and blues appeared to be crashing out of their first FA Cup quarter final in 10 years.
An hour later, they were marching into their first FA Cup semi-final for a decade.
But Villa’s Wembley wait was nowhere near as long as Reading’s, who last made it into the last eight and last four 83 long years ago. In fact Long was the operative word for the Royals after Shane Long returned from a four-game ban to score a dream double.
Long was given the freedom of the six-yard box to head the Championship’s form team in front on 27 minutes after Matt Mills beat Carlos Cuellar and Richard Dunne in the air to nod on Brian Howard’s left wing corner.
