BRIGHTON, England (Reuters) – Aston Villa defender Matty Cash scored his second objective for the membership earlier than ahead Ollie Watkins struck within the second half to safe a 2-0 victory over Brighton & Hove Albion in a tetchy Premier League encounter on Saturday.
Villa’s arrival at Brighton’s Amex Stadium was delayed attributable to visitors issues they usually clicked into gear after a sluggish begin when Cash managed a move from the left and fired a low shot previous Robert Sanchez within the seventeenth minute.
Cash was booked for eradicating his shirt to unveil the phrases “keep sturdy my bro” for Poland workforce mate Tomasz Kedziora, who performs for Dynamo Kiev and continues to be caught in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion of the nation this week.
Watkins ensured a league double for Villa over Brighton within the 68th minute with a cool end, after the south coast facet’s defence was caught off guard by an excellent lengthy move from skipper Tyrone Mings.
Manager Steven Gerrard will hope Villa’s second victory in eight league matches which lifted them to twelfth place will spark an upturn of their fortunes, whereas mid-table Brighton have been left to rue their third straight defeat.
“We’ve been on the again of some sticky type of late however credit score to the gamers they caught at. We got here out of the blocks in good type at the moment and put in a very sturdy efficiency,’ Gerrard advised the BBC.
“In the primary we owned the pitch out of possession at the moment and all our great things got here from that. We appeared essentially the most harmful workforce all through.
“The focus and focus from the boys out of possession was excellent.”
Brighton supervisor Graham Potter mentioned he was pissed off by the scoreline however happy together with his workforce’s exhibiting on the day.
“We began nicely and their objective got here out of nothing from our perspective,” Potter mentioned.
“That made it tough in opposition to a well-organised facet with high quality gamers on the high finish of the pitch.”
Tempers flared in a feisty opening half and Mings was amongst a number of gamers proven yellow playing cards, with the England defender punished for berating Marc Cucurella who was writhing in ache following a conflict with Watkins.
(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing by Christian Radnedge and Pritha Sarkar)
