Action Jackson fires Villa to victory over Maresca’s Man City

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Man City were welcomed to Villa park with the inevitable chorus of boos from the home supporters, a trend that will no doubt continue to follow them around at away grounds for the foreseeable future, or at least until we know what the punishment will be for the club’s breach of Financial Fair Play rules.

The Villa fans were not shy in letting the away fans know what they thought of them, with chants advising that they “know what they are.” 

To be fair to the City fans, they responded in kind by singing “we know what we are” — maybe a tongue-in-cheek confession of sorts from the Cityzens, which may earn them some sympathy from the more empathetic of rival supporters, who understand that the fans themselves played no part in the club’s rule breaks.

Not much empathy was shown on the pitch however, as a sixth minute miscontrol from Marc Guehi was cruelly punished by the home side, with Villa Captain John McGinn pouncing on the loose ball and feeding Jackson instantly down the inside left channel of the box.

Guehi’s teammate Elliot Anderson did his best to get back on the cover to spare his England colleague’s blushes, but Jackson stepped inside Anderson’s challenge onto his right foot and fired hard and high into Gianluigi Donnarumma’s net to give Villa the lead.

The away team sparked into life following that setback, with Iliman Ndiaye being the first City player to test Zion Suzuki in the Villa goal. The Senegalese winger cut inside from the right, jinking past a couple of challenges before firing a curling effort towards the far corner of the Villa net, but Suzuki was across smartly to palm the effort away at full stretch.

Suzuki was called into action again eight minutes later when Jeremy Doku fired a low ball across the penalty box, which was met centrally by Rayan Cherki, whose low sweeping shot was maybe a bit too close to the Villa keeper, but he still had to get down quickly to save the shot with a big left hand to preserve Villa’s lead into the interval.

The away side drew themselves level just after the break when a City free-kick 25 yards out was played short by Enzo Fernandez to Ndiaye, who received the ball wide on the right hand side of the area before floating a cross to the back post, where Erling Haaland outjumped and outmuscled his Scandinavian counterpart Victor Lindelof to nod home past Suzuki.

But on the 68th minute of this enthralling match, Jackson bagged his second goal of the game after he himself had played a good ball in behind the City defence, for substitute Ibrahim Mbaye to sprint onto. The former PSG winger calmly delayed his pass before playing a perfect ball back to the edge of the area, where Jackson was arriving to fire the ball towards goal and under the hapless Donnarumma for the winner.

“I think we deserved more from the game from the amount of chances we created,” stated Maresca following his first league loss as Manchester City manager.