When the fixtures for this season were first released, it was a song no one expected to hear on the final day at Villa Park. But as the celebrations began at the sound of the final whistle, supporters of both sides joyously launched into a most unlikely rendition. “We’re all going on a European tour,” they happily sang to one another.
With Brighton’s first continental venture in their 122-year history already assured, this hugely entertaining Aston Villa win meant the home side will join them in Europe for the first time since 2010. A campaign that initially looked to be dominated by fears of the Championship extraordinarily ended with a spot in the Europa Conference League.
Included on the Premier League manager of the season shortlist this month, few coaches can claim as unexpected an impact as Unai Emery, who took charge of a club languishing in the bottom five in November and bracing themselves for a long relegation fight. That he turned the campaign into one that yielded European football is staggering. To do so with almost entirely the same playing squad as his predecessor Steven Gerrard even more remarkable.
“Historically, this is a great team,” said Emery. “We won the European Cup a long time ago, but we can now try to improve and get an ambitious step ahead. This is the first step.
“I want to enjoy what we achieved because it’s fantastic. We are going to play in Europe. It’s very important to celebrate and enjoy it. I like champagne – I think today is a champagne moment.”
In players such as Jacob Ramsey, Tyrone Mings, John McGinn, Douglas Luiz and Ollie Watkins, Emery has inspired repeated brilliance since taking the reins. That core quintet were again pillars at the heart of this triumph.
Ramsey is realising a dream at his boyhood club and he proved a constant nuisance, creating both early Villa goals on the day he turned 22. So scared were the Brighton defence that they habitually stood off the birthday boy, allowing him to exhibit poise to great effect when expertly picking out Douglas Luiz for the opener.
Villa’s second was all about his pace, bursting behind the defence and unselfishly passing for Watkins to tap into the vacant goal. The only thing missing from Ramsey’s performance was a goal of his own – a gap left unfilled by an astonishing miss 10 minutes into the second half when he somehow failed to convert into an empty net from three yards out.
Villa continued to threaten, even as nerves jangled with Tottenham winning at Leeds, repeatedly laying siege on the Brighton goal until the death, albeit without joy.
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A much-altered Brighton side played their part in a match played at breakneck speed. The visitors thought they had an early goal, only for Julio Enciso – whose pinpoint cross had been turned in by Deniz Undav – to be ruled offside by VAR.
Where that decision gave Villa fans a belated celebration, Brighton soon had some delayed gratification of their own with half-time approaching when Undav was wrongly judged offside as the German fired past Emiliano Martínez. Again, VAR overturned the decision, allowing the goal to stand.
Defeat did not dampen the spirits of the travelling fans, who said farewell to Alexis Mac Allister and Moisés Caicedo in the expectation that they will depart. “I’m really sorry because they are two great people and two great players,” said the manager, Roberto De Zerbi. “But the policy of Brighton is like this and we have to accept. We have to find other big players to play without them.”
