Tariq Lamptey saves Brighton after Morgan Rogers runs Aston Villa show | first division

If anyone Villa Aston o Brighton have European ambitions, they will need 2025 to start better than they finished 2024. The match began and ended ninth against tenth after Tariq Lamptey was the unlikely hero with a late equalizer to punish the hosts for wasting an excess of opportunities.

Villa have won four of their last 15 games this year, while Brighton are winless in seven, making them the poster child for mid-table mediocrity at mid-season. Goals from Ollie Watkins and Morgan Rogers had put Villa ahead after Simon Adingra's opener and the hosts felt victorious until Lamptey scored his third goal in 95 league games as Brighton equalized with less than 10 minutes remaining. end.

It should not have come to this for Villa, who dominated possession but looked vulnerable on the counter-attack. Chances came and went with great regularity, with 20 attempts but only four on target. Rogers was a constant threat with his direct running and deft dribbling, making Lamptey's night a difficult one, but the hosts struggled in the early stages to threaten Bart Verbruggen's goal.

Turning Villa's defense was a key strategy for Brighton. It was a long clearance over Lewis Dunk that resulted in the first goal, as Ezri Konsa and Pau Torres, who later suffered a suspected metatarsal fracture, failed to resolve the issue when the ball fell into the box, resulting in allowed Adingra to intervene. and curves past Emiliano Martínez into the corner.

Emery used his program notes to bemoan VAR and was once again irritated by the referees who ruled that Jan Paul van Hecke had received the ball after a reckless lunge on Rogers in the box. Villa's manager raised his arms as the video officials declared there was no need to overturn the original decision. He had no reason to worry because, in the next action, João Pedro kicked Rogers when he was trying to clear a corner and, this time, Craig Pawson, the referee, ended up changing his mind on the screen after ruling that Verbruggen was not impeded seconds before the lack , much to the chagrin of Fabian Hürzeler. Watkins, on his 29th birthday, did the rest.

“You can give the penalty, but you can't stop fouling Bart,” said Hürzeler, reprimanded for his complaints. “In a normal game, when a player is blocked when the ball is not near him, it is always a foul, so I don't understand why it is not a foul, they have to find an answer.”

It was only fair that Rogers' terrorizing of Brighton was rewarded when the visitors failed to clear their lines in the 47th minute. Watkins launched a pass over the defense which Rogers chested and immediately fired the ball into the corner for his sixth goal of an electrifying season. The winger was by far the best player on the field, having received a penalty, and was causing panic among those dressed in yellow.

Unai Emery said: “I think we deserved to win, we played more or less the same way in the last home game (against Manchester City), but sometimes that's enough. I think we should be proud of everything we have done this year. “We are finishing the first part of the season and the year and we have to be proud of everything we did.”

Hürzeler did his best to get Brighton into the game by making a triple substitution before the hour mark. Kaoru Mitoma and Yankuba Minteh brought much-needed verve to their performance and it was the Japanese winger who helped create the equalizer when he found João Pedro in the box, who put the ball into Lamptey's path to take a touch and shoot. in the corner from 18 yards.

Lamptey had earned greater freedom by moving Rogers towards the center after a tactical adjustment, allowing him to advance further without fear of being exposed if things went wrong, but it was Villa who was punished.

“I think we were a better team, we created better chances, we controlled the game, especially in the first 20-25 minutes,” Hürzeler said. “We got the tie, we had two or three other great moments, great opportunities, in which we could easily score the third goal. When you come back it's always good, but in the end I think we deserved much more.”