ASToN VILLA 1

Grealish (88)

WIGAN ATH 0

JACK GREALISH came up trumps for Aston Villa as he scored a late winner to sink Wigan.

For long periods Villa struggled to find a winning formula, but a spot of isolated brilliance by Grealish settled the game.

Wigan, struggling to move out of the bottom reaches, played with resolution only to fail at the final hurdle.

Jordan Amavi was the first to threaten with a speculative long-range effort which demonstrated Villa’s obvious desire to overwhelm their opposition. Amavi again powered in another goalbound effort only for Jussi Jaeskelainen to make a smart save to his left.

Jaeskelainen was the last line of defence after skipper Stephen Warnock made a bad mistake to allow Albert Adomah to gain possession and send Jonathan Kodjia racing clear, but he failed to find the back of the net.

Wigan were restricted to isolated attacks which usually involved strikes from Luke Garbutt and Yanic Wildschut.

A busy, industrious Wigan continued to frustrate Villa, who lacked a player to energise the team into a winning position.

In an effort to inject more attacking pressure, Villa introduced their expensive signing, Ross McCormack, but to no avail as Wigan dropped a defensive anchor.

The danger to Villa was the occasional break out of defence by Wigan, as demonstrated when Wildschut sprang clear and fired over.

Seven minutes from time Alan Hutton collected a yellow card followed by Grealish – Villa’s massive 54th booking of the season.

But Grealish atoned in the 87th minute when he collected a loose ball and hammered a rising shot into the top left hand corner of the net.