BORO BRING BLUNT CLUB TO KNIFE FIGHT

SPEAKING before kickoff, Steve Bruce said his Aston Villa side were facing the best squad in the Championship.

On this evidence, he is doing his own boys a disservice.

Man for man, the visitors were more inventive and more incisive. As a team, they were a Swiss Army knife to Boro’s blunt club.

And if Jack Grealish is Villa’s figurehead, he is far from their sole hope.

Can Tony Pulis truthfully say the same about his talisman Adama Traore?

So reliant have the Teessiders become on the Spanish speedster that Villa could double or even treble up on Traore safe in the knowledge that nobody else in red had the tools to carve them open.

Once he was shackled by the unlikely figure of veteran full-back Alan Hutton, Boro’s challenge withered on the vine and it is no overstatement to suggest that Villa saw the match out in cruise control.

If Middlesbrough are to turn this tie on its head at Villa Park, Pulis must find a way to exploit the gaps that are inevitably left when Traore is tagteamed.