WSL 22/23 AVWFC vs Man City

Fairly safe to say this was not the game I expected when I went to Villa Park today!

The personnel hasn't changed massively from last season which was a bit of a slog to be fair but where new players have been bought in they bring a lot of talent and an awful lot of experience.

Once the game settled down after the first few minutes Villa were playing with a lot more confidence than I'd seen previously - the speed of passing, the movement and the assuredness across the back line were all notable as was the press which seemed to unsettle City and ultimately led to the first goal coming from Alisha Lehman after 22 minutes.

10 minutes later an absolute wonderful strike by the debuting Rachel Daly made it 2-0 and 6000+ fans were in dream land!

Unfortunately a really soft goal to concede in injury time just before half time really changed the complexion of the game and no doubt the content of the team talks. Good play in the build up from City but Hampton seemed to misjudge the shot from Coombs and it snuck in.

City came out rejuvenated and started the second half very much on the front foot and within 10 minutes had turned the game on its head taking a 3-2 lead with goals from Shaw and a 2nd for Coombs

At this point it seemed likely that they could run away with it now. But this new Aston Villa had a lot of fight left in them.

The experience and spirit within the team wouldn't let heads drop and within 5 minutes they had found an equaliser from another player making her debut Kenza Dali. The final shot was deflected out of the reach of Roebuck but the build up play was superb.

With things all square it really could have gone either way at this point with both teams attacking at every opportunity. According to the BBC website there were 28 shots in the game with 14 on target - safe to say both teams were going for it!

Ultimately Villa were able to gran the deciding goal in the 76th minute again after some good build up play, with Daly prodding home from close range after Hansons shot could only be parried at the near post.

The final 14 minuted were quite tense and both teams had further opportunities to score and despite over 7 minutes of inury time Villa were able to hold on and claim a very memorable victory!

Ref watch - not too many big decisions to make, but did seem to let a few things go but then blow for some innocuous looking challenges. There were also at least 2 occasions where Man City would have benefitted from playing the advantage but the ref awarded free kicks

Player of the match - really hard to overlook the trio of debutants Daly, Dali and Hanson who worked their socks off all game and created so many attacking opportunities, but also Laura Blinkilde had a fantastic game and seems to have added a lot of strength and fight to her game over the summer.

But for me I think the skipper Rachel Corsie bossed the game from the midfield and set the standard from start to finish with a really composed performance

If this is the marker for the rest of the season we could have a very exciting year ahead. The squad now has a good mix of experience and youth, the back 4 looked solid and organised and to top it all off it seems like they now have some genuine attacking threat.