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64 min: Ozer claims the corner easily enough. Up the other end, Bentaleb floats one into the Villa box from the right, looking for Giroud. Martinez claims. Lille obviously just going for it now, with little to lose.
63 min: Rogers glides in from the left and finds Watkins on the edge of the D. Watkins spins and whistles a low shot inches wide of the bottom left. So close to putting this tie to bed. But it’s a corner, the ball having taken a nick on the way through.
61 min: Rogers slaloms out of defence and creams a long pass down the right for Watkins, who had bent his run well to stay onside. Watkins makes it all the way into the box, but can’t fashion space for a shot. His attempted cutback for Luiz is intercepted, and Lille counter. Bouaddi rolls a pass down the left channel to release Giroud, who meets a ball dropping over his shoulder by lashing it into the top-left corner at 101 mph. One of those that whips the netting violently, the sweetest of sounds, and rolls all around the frame of the goal at pace. But it won’t count, because he’s clearly offside. What a finish, though!
59 min: Sancho wins a corner, which Ozer claims. But how the mood in Villa Park has changed. Everyone roaring now. Lille were pushing hard to level up the tie, and everyone in the grand old pile was getting nervous. Not so much now!
57 min: Meanwhile amid all the celebrations, Watkins comes on for Abraham.
56 min: Martinez races out of his box to celebrate that goal with some vigour. He knows what a magnificent pass upfield that was, and he’s going to enjoy the moment. He deserves it! A pretty decent save, too! And hats off to Sancho for the incisive assist, and McGinn for the calm, elegant finish. That was such fun to watch.
GOAL! Aston Villa 1-0 Lille (McGinn 54); agg 2-0
Bouaddi is tripped needlessly by Luiz, 25 yards out, to the left of centre. Bentaleb takes the free kick, whipping to the bottom left. Martinez claims, a decent save. He springs up, and sends a long, flat kick upfield to Sancho, racing into space down the right. Sancho doesn’t miscontrol this time! He chops into the box, past Correia, and rolls across for McGinn, free on the penalty spot. McGinn takes a nanosecond to size up the situation, and steers across Ozer and into the bottom right! What a counter!
52 min: Villa have had trouble getting out from the back since the restart. So when Rogers plays a clever ball around the corner down the right to release Sancho into acres, things suddenly open up for the hosts. So imagine the sound from the stands when Sancho carelessly clanks the ball out of play for a throw, under no pressure whatsoever. The nerves are jangling all right.
51 min: Correia nearly slips Giroud into the box down the left. Bogarde and Lindelof do well to slam the door shut just in time. The Villa Park crowd are getting anxious, their chatter nervous.
49 min: Bouaddi spins into a bit of space down the left. His low cross is snaffled by Martinez, but only because Lille hadn’t committed anyone in the middle. Villa are sleepwalking a bit here.
47 min: Nothing comes of the resulting corner. But it’s the visiting Lille support who are making more of the noise right now.
46 min: Meunier curls dangerously in from the right. Giroud is about to head home at the near post, but he’s unable to flick past Lindelof, who blocks out for a corner. That’s fine work by Lindelof, because Giroud was almost certainly scoring had the defender not read the danger.
Aston Villa get the second half underway. No changes.
Two English clubs have already bagged themselves a European quarter-final spot tonight. Crystal Palace are through in the Europa League Conference League …
… while Nottingham Forest have made it to the last eight of the Conference League Europa League. Can Villa make it three out of three, placing a cherry atop the cake on a better night for English football? We’ll find out soon enough.
Half-time postbag/essay. “Villa need some energy from somewhere, and with all due respect to Dougie Luiz and Leon Bailey, they haven’t shown much to suggest Villa were wrong to off-load them in the first place. I’d have kept Malen, and would far rather him in Birmingham and Bailey in Rome.
“Bogarde is a solid but unadventurous presence at right-back and he rather self-nullifies any overlapping right-wing threat. Hoping switching Rogers and Sancho, and Ollie being on the bench helps to open up a new dimension to an attack that has grown very stale without Tielemans’ vision and quality of pass to drive from midfield.
“Ultimately, this Lille side showed little last week to have me very worried, but it would be nice to get a decent result again to offset the repeated blows to squad confidence in the league.
“We so desperately need Youri back (Kamara, too, but alas not possible) and whilst it’s an indictment of club squad-planning in itself that those two players are so irreplaceably critical to Villa performances, I’ve got my fingers crossed that his return in the not-too-distant future will arrest the league decline and help Emery to his fifth Europa League win!
“Oh, and you’re totally right - Villa’s pennant is deeply underwhelming!” – Benjamin Gravestock
HALF TIME: Aston Villa 0-0 Lille (agg 1-0)
Nothing much to report, but Villa are one step closer to the quarters.
45 min: There will be one additional first-half minute.
43 min: Ozer claims the corner without fuss.
42 min: Abraham, buzzing around, forces Perraud into the clumsy concession of a corner. McGinn sends it in from the right. Onana wins a header, flicking the ball towards the top left. Ozer claws it out, spectacularly so. Sancho can’t ram home the rebound from close range, the ball not quite dropping for him, but he does win a second corner in the sequence. From which …
40 min: Bentaleb sprays a diagonal towards Perraud on the Lille left. Perraud creams a first-time cross into the Villa box, but Martinez is on point to claim under pressure from Correia and Giroud. Then, with Lille having committed players to attack, Rogers goes long to send Abraham scampering after the ball down the middle. Ozer comes out of the box to clear, just in time. The game suddenly opening up.
38 min: … and now Meunier cynically clips Maatsen’s ankle on the left flank. This challenge earns a stern talking-to, at least.
37 min: Mukau comes through the back of Onana, and is the latest player to escape more serious censure than the shrill parp of a whistle. To be fair, none of these challenges have been particularly unpleasant; it’s merely that a fussier referee might have got card-happy. And there’s not a great deal else to talk about.
35 min: Rogers advances down the middle and rolls a pass right to Sancho, who enters the box and sizes up a shot. Blocked. But that’s a little bit better from the hosts, Rogers injecting a bit of pace and determination, and it’s got the crowd going again.
33 min: Perraud holds onto Sancho’s arm. A foul. He’s slightly fortunate not to go into the book. It would have been soft, granted. Then Bogarde gets away with a saucier one, crumping into the back of Bouaddi in the no-nonsense style. The referee in a very relaxed, hands-free mood right now.
31 min: Villa Park is pretty quiet right now. Lille may consider that a good job done.
29 min: A simple long ball down the left opens up Lille. Abraham chases after it, enters the box, and larrups a shot towards the bottom left. Ozer turns it around the post, at which point the flag goes up for offside. Abraham was indeed well off.
27 min: Luiz snaffles possession down the left and for a moment Villa have an extra man. He flips the ball to Sancho on the overlap. Sancho falls over and the ball rolls apologetically out for a goal kick.
25 min: Bogarde, in flight down the right, is hauled back by Correia, who goes into the book. Rogers meanwhile is back up and running.
24 min: Rogers takes an accidental knee in the coccyx from Alexsandro and needs a while to compose himself, which is fair enough.
22 min: Rogers has the chance to release Sancho into the Lille box, but overhits the pass. He’s not happy with himself about that one.
21 min: Alexsandro has time and space out on the left. He curls a lovely high ball into the Villa box. Bouaddi heads over under pressure from Pau Torres. The flag goes up for offside, but had Bouaddi scored, VAR would have surely had a word. Bouaddi looked well on.
19 min: Rogers plays an instinctive defence-splitter down the inside-right channel for Sancho, who wins a corner. The set piece is worked back down the flank to McGinn, who swings a dangerous one into the mixer. Giroud, now fully functional again, heads clear.
17 min: Giroud gets back up after rolling his sock down and taking a good look at his sore shin. He cops some flak from the home fans, who presumably think he was looking for a penalty, but he’s more grimacing than moaning or making claims. An accidental sore one, and thankfully he’s good to continue.
16 min: Luiz miscontrols just inside his own box. Giroud nearly nicks away with the ball, but Luiz, lunging for it, gets there first. He then catches a little bit of his man, and Giroud crumbles to the ground dramatically. It’s not going to be a penalty, but that will have hurt.
15 min: Probe, pass, probe. Villa, with their 1-0 aggregate lead, will be happy enough with this undemanding start. No rush.
13 min: … so both teams have shown a little bit in attack, but a lot more patience. It’s a proper European night.
11 min: The corner’s only half cleared. Meunier’s volley back towards the goal nearly clears the Holte End.
10 min: McGinn dawdles on the ball and allows Meunier to make off with it. Meunier slips Correia into space on the right. Giroud wants a cross sent in, and he wants it now. Correia can’t oblige but he does win a corner.
9 min: Bentaleb takes a heavy touch as Lille pass it back and forth across the back. He very nearly lets Abraham in, but recovers his poise just in time. Nanoseconds in that. Abraham would have been clean through had he been able to nick off with the ball.
7 min: Villa back on it. Sancho, Rogers and Bogarde complete a couple of triangles down the right but there’s no way through the Lille back line. On the touchline, Unai Emery looks relatively relaxed.
5 min: A little bit of time on the ball for Lille, their first period of prolonged possession. They don’t do anything with it.
3 min: Rogers sends Sancho into space down the right. He cuts back for Luiz, who hammers a shot goalwards. Alexsandro blocks. The ball ricochets back off McGinn and over the bar. Alexsandro celebrates all of that like he would a goal; it’s possible Luiz’s fierce low drive was heading into the bottom right if it wasn’t for his intervention.
2 min: … but that was a fast start by Villa, and they’ve clearly been told to get right into Lille during the early exchanges. They’re first to everything at the moment. Small sample size, admittedly.
1 min: Abraham gets lively quickly. He steals the ball off a snoozing Bouaddi and feeds McGinn down the inside-left channel. McGinn attempts something spectacular from distance. It doesn’t come off, dribbling harmlessly wide right.
Lille get the ball rolling. A lot of smoke rolling around Villa Park. No pyro, no party.
The teams are out! Aston Villa in their claret and blue, Lille in black and blue. Not sure that’s the greatest mix for colour-blind fans, but their concerns seem to have gone by the wayside these days. Meanwhile here’s a late, unplanned edition of PENNANT WATCH. This has to be a work in progress accidentally released into the wild, surely. William McGregor a purveyor of quality cloth as well. For shame. This “effort” registers 1/10 on our patented aesthetic-o-scope, 11/10 on the will-this-do-o-meter.
Unai Emery speaks to TNT Sports. “Good evening … respect the competition … we played a very safe match in the first leg … today will be very difficult … we must play serious … impose and dominate … but adapt to moments in the game … we must keep our structure tactically … I will need both [Tammy Abraham and Ollie Watkins] … they must be ready to fight to play with their skills.”
… and here’s what happened the last time these teams met. A rare old back-and-forth in the quarter-finals of the 2023-24 Conference League.
The first leg. A reminder of what happened last week, when Ollie Watkins gave Villa a one-goal lead with a second-half header.
Unai Emery makes four changes to his Aston Villa side from the XI that started the 1-0 win in Lille last week. Tammy Abraham, Ian Maatsen, Victor Lindelöf and captain John McGinn are in; Ollie Watkins, Emiliano Buendía, Ezri Konsa and Lucas Digne drop to the bench.
Olivier Giroud, once of Arsenal and Chelsea, leads the line for Lille. Nabil Bentaleb, formerly of Tottenham and Newcastle, starts in midfield.
The teams
Aston Villa: Martinez, Bogarde, Lindelof, Torres, Maatsen, Onana, Douglas Luiz, Sancho, Rogers, McGinn, Abraham.
Subs: Bizot, Wright, Cash, Konsa, Mings, Elliott, Buendia, Watkins, Digne, Garcia, Bailey.
Lille: Ozer, Meunier, Mbemba, Alexsandro Victor, Ngoy, Bouaddi, Bentaleb, Perraud, Mukau, Giroud, Correia.
Subs: Bodart, Lanssade, Fernandez, Arnar Haraldsson, Edjouma, Santos, Mandi, Verdonk, Diaoune, Baret, Boussadia.
Referee: Davide Massa (Italy).
Preamble
Aston Villa should be good for this. They’ve only faced Lille once before in European competition, and got through in the 2023-24 Conference League quarters. They’ve won each of their last six Europa League games, a run that by definition includes the first leg of this tie. Lille have never won in England, losing on their last seven visits. And Villa have Unai Emery at the wheel: Mr Europa League has won this competition four times, with a runners-up medal thrown in to boot. But it’s not been a banner week for English teams on the continent, so let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Bologna or Roma waiting in the quarters, mind. Kick-off is at 8pm GMT. It’s on!
