Aston Villa’s Tammy Abraham grabs dramatic victory after Sunderland rally

The finish was chaotic, brilliant, exhausting but, when the dust settles, this perhaps was the afternoon when Aston Villa made a decisive spurt for the finish line to claim Champions League qualification. As Tammy Abraham touched in the winner three minutes into injury-time, Unai Emery ran on to the pitch in celebration. Yet just a minute earlier Habib Diarra had been set clean through with a chance of his own to win it. Emi Martínez, though, stretched up to save his dink, and the road was cleared for the Villa winner.

“We need strikers and goalkeepers,” said Emery. “It was the match -three points for them and no three points for us.”

It had been a game played amid a strange spirit of relaxation, with both sides having in effect achieved their ambitions for the season before kick-off: for Sunderland, avoiding the drop, and for Villa qualifying for the Champions League; Emery’s fifth Europa League success, itself a potential route into the premier competition, may still come as a bonus.

This was just Villa’s fifth win in 15 league games since their run of eight league wins in a row came to an end in late December, but the win means they now have a 10-point lead over Chelsea in sixth with five games remaining.

“I am so, so happy,” Emery went on. “We played a fantastic match and maybe the two goals we conceded in one minute, we lost our mind a little bit. But how we reacted at 3-3 to score the fourth goal was fantastic.”

Sunderland still need a point to be sure of staying up but realistically they have been safe since winning the Tyne-Wear derby before the international break. European ­qualification was always a distant dream, and would bring with it strains that this squad may not yet be ready to ­withstand; for them the main goal now is to finish above Newcastle, whom they lead by four points.

“I’m disappointed because we had the opportunity to win the game, just with this one-v-one with Habib,” said Régis Le Bris. “But the opposite way we conceded the late goal. We showed good character and resilience, some good quality at times, but we felt the strength of Aston Villa and they created many chances.”

Wilson Isidor equalises for Sunderland just a minute after teammate Trai Hume made it 3-2 against Aston Villa. Photograph: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images

Ollie Watkins had scored his 100th goal for the club against Bologna in the Europa League on Thursday and his 101st and 102nd followed before half-time. Within two minutes he had nodded in at the back post from a John McGinn cross. His runs behind Reinildo were a threat all afternoon. The striker’s second came nine minutes before the break as Morgan Rogers held the ball up cleverly before laying in Ian Maatsen, who had got away from Chris Rigg, to deliver the perfect cross for Watkins to head in again.

Sunderland, admirably unfazed by going behind so early, had equalised after nine minutes with a strike of real quality. Diarra had the patience to work an opening on the right, cutting back to Noah Sadiki whose instant lay-off gave Rigg time to pick his spot and curl his first Premier League goal into the far corner. For all his ­experience, Rigg is still only 18, but the esteem with which his ­teammates hold him was evident in the mass celebration and with Sadiki banging the ball off his head.

When Le Fée was caught in possession by McGinn in the first minute of the second half, initiating a break that was finished off by Rogers, it seemed that Sunderland would pay for being less clinical than their opponents. For half an hour the game seemed safe. But then Trai Hume pulled one back after Jadon Sancho was dispossessed. Then Sancho was dispossessed again and Le Fée laid in Wilson Isidor for his first club goal since scoring at Stamford Bridge in October.

Remarkably, though, there was still more drama to come. Neither manager, you suspect, would be entirely happy with the chaotic nature of the second half, the end-to-end attacking, the errors that created the opportunities for a string of extraordinary finishes, culminating in Abraham’s deft flick to turn in Lucas Digne’s cross. In the end, though, it was Villa celebrating in the April sunshine.