Aston Villa’s shock 7-2 thrashing of Liverpool has been chosen by 90min readers as the best game of the 2020/21 Premier League season in an online poll.
53% of 3,112 people who voted chose it as the top match of the whole campaign, ahead of Liverpool’s 4-3 win over Leeds on the opening weekend (22%), Spurs’ 6-1 thrashing of Manchester United at Old Trafford (14%) and West Ham’s 3-3 comeback draw against Spurs (10%).
Villa had only just stayed in the Premier League in 2019/20, while Liverpool were runaway champions, which is what made the 7-2 score-line at Villa Park in October so bizarre.
With Jack Grealish running the show, Villa were utterly relentless and brutally punished Liverpool for a sub-par performance like no one would ever have expected.
This was time before Liverpool had lost Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez to long-term injuries and both started in what was Jurgen Klopp’s first choice back four and an almost full strength side overall. However, the loss of goalkeeper Alisson was felt because stand-in Adrian was poor (to say the least).
It was the understudy stopper’s wayward pass that directly led to the opening goal, allowing Grealish to feed Ollie Watkins to score inside four minutes. That same combination then put Villa 2-0 up moments later.
Liverpool thought they were clawing their way back into the game when Mohamed Salah made it 2-1 around the half hour mark, only for John McGinn to re-extend Villa’s two-goal advantage almost immediately. Watkins then completed his hat-trick to make it 4-1 before half-time.
Villa kept going after the break and Grealish completed a hat-trick of assists when he laid on his team’s fifth goal for former Everton star Ross Barkley. Salah got another after that, but then Grealish got on the score-sheet himself to net twice in quick succession to make it 7-2.
Liverpool were utterly shellshocked and the result moved Villa up to second in the table.
For more from Jamie Spencer, follow him on Twitter and Facebook!
Source : 90min