Aston Villa squeezed through to the second round of the Carabao Cup, maintaining their 100% winning start to the season, but it was far from plain sailing against a charged home side. With a penalty shootout looming, the substitutes Jack Grealish and Jonathan Kodjia combined, allowing Conor Hourihane to power home the only goal of the game to send the Villa supporters – almost 2,000 of them – home happy on a balmy evening in Somerset.
It made painful viewing for Steve Bruce, who had to call upon the zest of Grealish and Kodjia from the bench to breathe life into an otherwise lethargic performance. Villa, who donned their purple third-kit for the first time, were decidedly off-colour. The hosts had a goal disallowed before Tommy Elphick, the deputising captain, hauled down Omar Sowunmi, the Yeovil skipper, in the box in the second half. But Alex Fisher had his tame penalty comfortably saved by André Moreira, the keeper making his Villa debut.
“It’s nice to keep the momentum but we can’t kid ourselves that we can accept that,” a forthright Bruce said. “We can be all cock-a-hoop but we weren’t anywhere we needed to be and I was disappointed in the whole lot if I’m being brutally honest. Our goalkeeper’s had a good night but the rest of it left a lot to be desired. We needed to find a spark, and when Jack came on, and Kodjia, he gave us that bit of quality to win us the match.
“Jack is playing on top of his game. As soon as he comes on the pitch, he gives us a bit more control.”
For Yeovil, cup runs balance the books and while this valiant effort will not help pay the bills the League Two side should take heart from this steely and courageous display. They made it an uncomfortable evening for a much-changed Villa side littered with teenagers; Andre Green and Axel Tuanzebe were the only survivors from Saturday’s stoppage-time win over Wigan. The 19-year-olds Jake Doyle-Hayes and Rushian Hepburn-Murphy found life difficult, with Sessi D’Almeida, Yeovil’s beating midfield heart, stampeding his way over Villa’s few green shoots.
“Physically, they were big, huge monsters and we found it difficult at times,” Bruce said. “Fair play to them, they made it a great cup tie and on another night they could have gone through.”
Darren Way certainly felt his team deserved more and was adamant that Diallang Jaiyesimi’s finish from Carl Dickinson’s inswinging corner should have stood and was unhappy with Kodjia, who he accused of “throwing two punches” at his defender Gary Warren in the buildup to the winner. “We should have won that game, quite clearly, we’ve been done by the officials,” the Yeovil manager said. “It was a goal, it was no foul. That decision has cost this football club massive.”
Jaiyesimi, the on-loan Norwich forward, was Yeovil’s catalyst, his trickery causing Villa defensive headaches; he scooted beyond Tuanzebe early on before Hourihane was reduced to tugging at his shirt. It was his inviting cross that had Moreira clambering and culminated in Tuanzebe hacking Fisher’s effort off the line.
Villa were lax, Yeovil composed, particularly in midfield, where D’Almeida, once of Paris Saint-Germain and Bordeaux, showed glimpses of his pedigree. At times it was hard to know which team was sitting pretty on maximum points in the Championship and which was 88th in the Football League.
Yoann Arquin, the Yeovil midfielder, latched on to a lofted ball, forcing Moreira to rush off his line to meet him and cagily clear before the goalkeeper was again forced to save Villa. Elphick gave away a clumsy foul in the box, giving the referee, John Brooks, no choice but to point to the spot. When Fisher stepped up from 12 yards, Moreira dived low to his left to gobble it up.
For a barely lukewarm Villa, something had to change and Bruce introduced Grealish and Kodjia. Within seven minutes, the former rattled the crossbar with an exquisite searching effort from 25 yards before Green drilled wide.
Yeovil did not relent, though, and the substitute Alex Pattison sent a ferocious effort bristling over the frame of Moreira’s goal.
Just as an entertaining game appeared to be heading for penalties, Hourihane made sure it came to an earlier climax, 13 minutes from time. Grealish sprayed a wonderful ball into Kodjia, who bamboozled Warren after getting to the byline before sliding in Hourihane to slot home on the goal-line and get Villa off the hook.
