Torres rescues Aston Villa and angry Emery as Wolves finish with 10 men
Perhaps the biggest surprise in this stop-start and spiky affair between Midlands rivals was that it took until the 94th minute for someone to see red. Wolves ended this ill-tempered draw with 10 men after Mario Lemina was sent off for picking up a second yellow card during 12 minutes of stoppage time but held on in a fraught finale against Aston Villa to claim a point.
Unai Emery and Gary O’Neil did not shake hands following a flashpoint at the final whistle, the former not content to wait around while his opposite number quizzed the fourth official, Paul Tierney, about why the game ticked past 103 minutes.
“My conversation with the fourth official was about eight seconds long so he wouldn’t have had to wait very long,” O’Neil said. “But I understand if he doesn’t want to, no problem. I’ve got no problem with Unai at all.”
Ollie Watkins, Ezri Konsa and the Villa substitute Nicolò Zaniolo both went close to finding a winner, Watkins hitting a post with almost the last kick of the game and Zaniolo sidefooting inches wide from a Leon Bailey corner, but ultimately Pau Torres’s first Villa goal cancelled out Hwang Hee-chan’s opener. Wolves earlier missed a chance to regain the lead but the again excellent Pedro Neto was unable to beat Emiliano Martínez after latching on to an arced cross by Sasa Kalajdzic, who himself was guilty of failing to take an inviting chance moments later.
The sight of Emery urging calm to anyone who would listen as Tierney indicated four additional first-half minutes felt a touch rich given he had spent almost the entire previous 45 haring around his technical area in fury, going haywire at the most innocuous errors. He was apoplectic when Douglas Luiz sent a careless pass astray and seemed close to combusting when John McGinn, his captain, leathered a shot harmlessly wide.
On another occasion the Villa manager gesticulated with Martínez for booting a kick straight at José Sá, the goalkeeper’s opposite number. Then he gestured for a yellow card, asking Tierney why Nélson Semedo, who was later cautioned, escaped a booking for a foul on Lucas Digne. Emery’s attempt to play peacemaker on the verge of half-time followed a contretemps between Rayan Aït-Nouri and McGinn, which led to a war of words on the touchline. Suddenly Emery was the one who appeared a picture of serenity.
“We are ambitious,” Emery said. “I am demanding of myself and of the players. We lost a little bit of control and we needed to better impose our positions on the pitch. We were giving them a lot of opportunities to keep possession, to get into our box and we were not really controlling the game like we had prepared before. At that moment I was a bit frustrated, upset and trying to push the players to get better.”
Perhaps Emery’s irritation stemmed from the reality that Villa’s best players had been nullified by the same threeman defence that shepherded Erling Haaland out of the game when Wolves beat Manchester City little over a week ago. Watkins, who this week signed a new five-year contract, had to feed off scraps and Moussa Diaby, Villa’s record signing, was subdued. Watkins sparked into life 46 seconds into the second half, forcing a fine fingertip save from Sá, but Villa’s busiest player was McGinn, at least on the basis of his pantomime tussle with Craig Dawson at free-kicks and corners.
This was of course a Castore derby: both teams are signed up to the same under-fire kit manufacturer, which received complaints from Villa players about shirts being too clingy. The game was prickly and, as McGinn and Dawson could attest, touchy-feely at times, too. “It’s a derby and I think we felt it on the pitch,” Emery said.
As for the absence of post-match formalities, the Villa manager said of O’Neil: “I was waiting to tell him ‘congratulations’ and I gave my hand and he was speaking with the assistant referee. I left, simply.”
Wolves seized the advantage eight minutes into the second half. Neto zoomed to the byline, breezing past Torres and from there he cut the ball back for Hwang, who nipped in front of Konsa to convert expertly from close range.
Their lead lasted little more than a minute, Torres making amends by prodding in a clever first-time Watkins cross at the back post. Emery was unmoved in the away dugout, arms folded as Torres pointed to the Villa crest on his chest.
Villa’s timely equaliser also arrived as Wolves’ supporters in the Sir Jack Hayward Stand were mocking their neighbours. This was an afternoon when both teams enjoyed their moment in the sun.