Aston Villa find their way to goal as European tour offers hope of a kickstart to their season | OneFootball

European football is always one of two things when your domestic form is in the sh*tter.

A bothersome burden, or welcome distraction. Villa, wisely in our view, have opted for the latter.

A team that has managed a solitary shot on target across three Premier League blanks raced into a 3-1 half-time lead against a very capable and increasingly Champions League-hardened Club Brugge team before holding on to complete a welcome victory.

There were defensive lapses that will be a slight concern, but winning this game 3-2 felt like it was of more positive benefit to Villa than a 1-0 grind might have been.

This had far more of a kickstart feel to it, and the slick quality of Villa’s attacking play, especially in that electric first half, was the game’s major takeaway.

Emi Buendia, Nicolas Jackson and John McGinn were excellent, while on another day teenager George Hemmings’ Champions League debut would have come with at least one goal from two clear chances early in the game.

This was a game that showed Villa remain an inevitable work in progress, but offered some necessary proof of concept that this new-look side and its new-look attack can flourish anew.

The first Villa goal came from Pau Torres finding a slightly confused Brugge apparently expecting a whistle and instead allowing him to march unencumbered straight through the midfield before laying the ball off to McGinn.

McGinn, already a vital cog in the Villa machine but now more vital than ever before, curled an unstoppable effort past Yann Sommer.

Further chances came and went. Two for Hemmings. A free-kick on the edge of the box after Sommer inexplicably escaped further sanction for blithely catching the box well outside his area after fumbling an attempted throw.

The second goal came from Buendia applying the close-range finishing touch after excellent work from Joao Gomes on the right-hand side.

And an excellent first half for Villa’s attack finished with Nicolas Jackson surely getting memories of Chelsea’s infamous 4-1 win at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium as the entire Brugge defence and Sommer went missing in action to allow him to run on to a long ball and find an unguarded net.

That was the good. And while that good did outnumber the bad, there was still some bad.

Brugge briefly pulled level in the first half when Hugo Vitlesen, who had already by that point established himself as Brugge’s most potent threat, was given the freedom of a heavily populated penalty area to find the bottom corner of Zion Suzuki’s net.

A grandstand finish was secured when Brugge made it 3-2 from a VAR-awarded penalty for handball by the otherwise-impressive Aaron Wan Bissaka.

One’s instinct is always to chide the interpretation of handball in continental competition when one sees the words ‘VAR’ and ‘penalty’ and ‘handball’ on a Champions League night, but in truth this one was fair enough. Wan-Bissaka was close to the ball when it was struck, but his arm was raised.

There could be few complaints, and there were the inevitable nervy moments interspersed with botched chances to finish the game off on the break.

But in many ways the eventual difficulty of this win highlights its significance. It matters precisely because it wasn’t easy. Because Club Brugge are no pushovers. Because this wasn’t some meaningless Carabao procession.

The talk is that Club Brugge have not been as impressive so far this season as last in the Belgian League – where they nevertheless have 12 points from five games – but this is still a side that thrashed Monaco and Marseille here in this competition last season, as well as drawing with Barcelona and Atletico Madrid.

It’s a significant place for Villa to have come and won, and especially in the enterprising and entertaining way in which they did it.

If there’s one club and one manager that shouldn’t panic early about the time taken to rumble up through the gears following an awkward summer and sticky start to the season, it’s Unai Emery’s Aston Villa.

This was a performance that delivered three big points and bristled with They’ll Be Fine energy. The travelling fans could have asked for no more.