AS ‘Get well Gerard’ gifts go, Saturday’s match was the football equivalent of giving the recovering Aston Villa boss a boring bunch of grapes.

But Gary McAllister insists if Villa and Houllier tread carefully then there will be all the ingredients of a vintage claret to look forward to next season instead.

McAllister quipped that Houllier would already be in possession of a DVD of the match by the time he visited him in the QE coronary ward on Saturday evening.

But the mundane action will hardly make enthralling viewing for the boss.

It’s just as well Houllier, thankfully, does not require surgery, because all the anaesthetists in the area were seemingly performing on the Villa Park pitch on Saturday afternoon.

McAllister claimed in advance of the match that Stoke’s stigma as a direct dead-ball team was harsh. Well, if that’s the case, someone clearly forgot to tell Tony Pulis.

It was not the only thing someone forgot to tell the Potters manager, who wrongly claimed fallen Holte End hero John Carew was eligible for a dramatic reunion with Villa.

For some reason, Pulis suggested the claret and blues had cancelled the big Norwegian’s contract, not loaned him out, which transpired to be a long way from the truth.

Not as long as Rory Delap’s throws, of course – and not that either side missed Carew.

On an afternoon when Sunderland finished without a striker on the pitch at the Stadium of Light, two of their former forwards were scorers at Villa Park – as ex-strike partners Kenwyne Jones and Bent went head to head. It was Jones who nodded the FA Cup finalists in front on 20 minutes from a Delap missile. It was Stoke’s 18th Premier League goal from a long throw in three seasons. The first also came against Villa during Stoke’s first home game on returning to the top flight in 2008.

‘Top flight’ is an apt term to describe Delap’s deliveries and, although the Villa defence knew they were coming, it was another thing stopping them.

It didn’t help that Villa’s two centre-halves both contrived to lose the Potters’ pony-tailed centre forward with Jones escaping the attentions of James Collins before leaping above Richard Dunne to power a header past Brad Friedel.

McAllister’s men can’t claim they weren’t warned. Within the first quarter hour, Pulis’ pummellers had forced a series of six corners in succession to pile pressure on the claret and blue backline.

At one stage it looked like Friedel was the only player offering Villa – and hospitalised Houllier tuning in from his sickbed – a helping hand in the opening stages.

The American veteran stood up strong to beat away Robert Huth’s hammered half-volley from the edge of the box and made a brilliant reflex stop to keep out an earlier Jones header from Matthew Etherington’s corner. But it’s unfair to be snobbish about Stoke’s route one approach when Villa are increasingly reliant on one route to goal themselves – Bent.

Goalscoring legend Pete Withe, paraded to the crowd as a pre-match guest of honour, must have been impressed with the way the long overdue successor to his 1981 throne headed Villa level.