Aston Villa's tremendous unbeaten home run ended by dominant Newcastle United
Birmingham World reporter Charlie Haffenden's post-match thoughts as Aston Villa are dispatched 3-1 by Newcastle United at Villa Park.
Transcript
00:00 Aston Villa's incredible 17-game unbeaten run here at Villa Park has come to an end
00:06 at the hands of Newcastle United, who before this have lost four successive Premier League games.
00:11 Unai Emery will be incredibly disappointed. It's a 3-1 defeat on the night and a deserved one as well for Newcastle,
00:16 who came out of the blocks a lot quicker in the first half, got two goals from Fabian Schär,
00:21 quick fire halfway through that first half, and then got a third just after the break as well.
00:26 That was an Alex Moreno own goal, an unfortunate own goal for the left-back as he clattered into his own post,
00:31 trying to stop Jacob Murphy scoring at the far post. But it was a deserved 3-0 lead for Newcastle.
00:37 Some substitutions midway through the second half helped Villa out a bit, but the momentum of the game changed.
00:42 It was Leon Bailey, who I think myself and a lot of people in this stadium thought should have started the game, came on.
00:48 He changed things. He showed desire, he got forward, he ran down the touchline,
00:52 and he got a deserved assist for Olly Watkins to get Villa back into the game.
00:56 There was some energy at the Villa Park as well as Watkins scored again just a few minutes later from another Leon Bailey pass.
01:02 But that one was narrowly offside. The Lionsman putting his flag up.
01:05 And after that, Newcastle, they sat in, they dug deep, and they held on for a very important three points.
01:10 Villa, well, it's a big dent in their top four hopes.
01:13 Lots of people were saying in December, could they get Premier League tie-4 hopes up?
01:18 But that's out the window now. It's now whether they could defend things in the top four.
01:22 Looking over their shoulders at Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea as well improving.
01:26 And yeah, it's going to get quite difficult, I think, for Unai Emery's team to hold on if this poor run of form continues.
01:32 Not the worst results in general, but definitely a slowing down on the pace that was shown throughout December.
01:38 [BLANK_AUDIO]