Aston Villa 0-0 Wolves || the-gorilla Match Report

The 3rd match of the day saw a Midlands derby with Wolves travelling the short 12 miles (19km) to Villa Park - the only of today's matches that I got to watch live.

I predicted a tight encounter before the match and that's exactly what we got.

The 1st half was a tight affair with neither goalkeeper being forced into a save. It was Aston Villa who looked the most likely scorers which saw them hit the cross bar twice. The first time being a speculative long range effort from Ollie Watkins and later a strike from the six-yard box by Ezri Konsa which somehow didn't find the back of the net - as Konsa stretched for it, it looked destined to be a goal. It was the aforementioned Ollie Watkins who looked most dangerous breaking through mid-way through the first half and having worked himself into a good position, tried to square it instead of taking the shot on. If a 30-yard shot showed a player full of confidence, passing up the opportunity to shoot from 8 yards out showed the complete opposite.

In the 1st half, Wolves looked dangerous in wide areas, in particular through Pedro Neto, but this didn't come close to materialising into anything that would threaten Emi Martinez's goal. The closest Wolves came was from a wide free kick that Conor Coady couldn't reach and could possibly have been flagged offside if he had, which sums up the lack of attacking threat that Wolves provided. You couldn't help but feel that Adama Traore's pace and power up against Ahmed El Mohamady was a mismatch that was never tested.

The 2nd half started with a more lively Wolves seeing them break quickly from an Aston Villa corner. Pedro Neto found himself in a foot race with Matt Targett from the half-way line and having outpaced him, Neto forced Emi Martinez into a sharp save at his near post. Shortly after, a deflected clearance fell to Ruben Neves who blazed well over from just outside the penalty area. From this point, Wolves continued to look the more threatening and from a training ground corner routine, Coady put it on a plate for Romain Saiss who somehow managed to put it over from a seemingly impossible position on the goal line. A miss that the SkySports commentator described as "the miss of all misses".

With 15 minutes to go, Wolves' pressure from a corner garnered a mistake by substitute Ross Barkley who provided Wolves with another superb chance which fell to Coady again on the 6-yard box which Martinez somehow managed to save from point blank range.

Despite offering very little in the 2nd half and Very much against the run of play, Villa nearly won it in stoppage time from a Barkley corner - Watkins forcing Rui Particio into a decent save with the rebound falling to Konsa again. Konsa snatched at the shot and blazed it over.

If Villa had the better of the 1st half, Wolves undoubtedly dominated the 2nd but couldn't quite do enough to win the match. Since gaining promotion in 2018, 65% of Wolves' goals have come in the 2nd half of matches so it's fair to say that it was a typical of a Wolves 1st half performance with them upping the pace in the 2nd.

A draw was a fair result and 0-0 fairly indicative of the 2 teams at present.

👇 Match Highlights from SkySports YouTube Channel