Villa still not quite on Rhode to recovery...
THEY say bad things come in threes – and that’s exactly what happened to Aston Villa on Tuesday night.
Leading thanks to James Chester’s early opener, the claret and blues were halfway towards their second win in a row under new boss Dean Smith.
Then in the 50th minute Albert Adomah hobbled off with an injury. A minute later Tammy Abraham dropped to the floor in a daze as he was unable to recover from a kick to the head from Tim Klose.
Sixty seconds later Jordan Rhodes levelled.
A draw wouldn’t have been a bad result but there was only ever one team in it from there.
And on 73 minutes Rhodes inflicted the killer blow with a finish that made Villa track him so heavily all those transfer windows ago.
His first was a well-taken header from Emiliano Buendia’s pin-point corner.
His second, a sublime take after he showed clever movement to step in front of James Chester and convert Marco Stiepermann’s cross.
Wild scenes followed in the home end and Carrow Road produced the chant of the night with a remix of Blur’s Nineties classic ‘Parklife’.
In reference to the six Germans who started for manager Daniel Farke, the hosts sang: ‘All the Germans, so many Germans, they all go hand in hand, hand in hand through their Farke-life’.
It was Scottish international, Rhodes, who they had to thank for this win, though.
Smith has called on his troops to cut out the sloppy goals after tasting defeat for the first time.
Alan Hutton and Chester were both outgunned by Rhodes for each of his goals – yet Smith insisted the injuries to Adomah and Abraham after the break played a part.
When asked what went wrong at Carrow Road, he replied: “It went wrong by not defending two crosses. That was the be-all and end-all really.
“We had a spell where two players went down – Albert with a collision on his knee, and Tammy with his head.
“We had to make two quick changes and normally in the area where Tammy heads it away, they score from the corner.
“But overall, I thought both teams cancelled each other out a little bit.
“The players can feel slightly unfortunate that they got beat because I don’t think they deserved to.”
Villa opened the scoring through James Chester on 18 minutes but the game was turned on its head by Rhodes after the break.
Sloppy goals aside, Smith was pleased with the effort and enthusiasm from his side.
“I thought we were better than we were on Saturday.
“Norwich are a good team, going well in the form league at the moment and for periods of the game we were comfortable in possession.
“We didn’t open them up enough, that was all.
Asked about the goals and keeping them out, he said: “Players are in good areas so they will have to take responsibility. The goalkeepers, centre-forwards, everyone who is there defending must do a little bit better.”