Aston Villa 1 Southampton 0 - Matt Maher analysis
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00:00Good evening from Villa Park, where I finished Villa 1, Southampton 0, two wins on the spin in the Premier League for Unai Emery's team for the first time since September and as things stand they are up to fifth tonight in the table, just what six days ago they lost at Chelsea and were down in 12th and it was all doom and gloom and then a quick turnaround in two wins, admittedly against two teams who struggle on the road in Brentford and Southampton and the picture is looking good.
00:30Looking a lot rosier. John Duran, the star of the show, he was handed his first Premier League start of the season, just his fourth Premier League start in all actually since joining Villa from Chicago Fireworks nearly two years ago and he delivered his first goal since October.
00:47His ninth goal of the season, his brother's top scorer of all competitions with a rare moment of quality in what was a poor game, understandably poor game considering the Gale force wins and it was played in and driving rain at times.
01:02Pounced on a mistake by Taylor Harwood-Bellis, Duran pared towards goal, this is a shot over Joe Lunley in the Southampton goal and after that not a huge amount from Villa until they brought on Olly Watkins with half an hour to go and Watkins delivered pretty much everything but the finish.
01:24He'll feel he should at least have scored a couple of goals but Villa's overall performance did improve in the last 20 minutes to half an hour and they really should have won this game by more. At the same time you never really felt they were under any serious pressure of not winning the game once Duran had put them in front.
01:42Southampton bottom of the table and today's performance showed why they didn't have an attempt on target, they didn't have a shot on goal for the last 25 minutes of the game so they're only losing by a single goal, very strange all round but a second clean sheet of the season for Villa that was the other big positive apart from Duran's goal but to be honest they probably won't get an easier clean sheet all season.