Aston Villa 0 - 1 Sunderland

Yes the scoreline is true, we won away from home and made it two games in a row that we won three points.

Steve Bruce named the same squad that beat Blackburn easily last game and the team responded with a brilliant result.

Villa had their chances but Sunderland were always in control with some good movement forward.

The best chance of the first half fell to Emile Heskey after a mistake from Zenden who replaced the unlucky David Meyler.

Every Sunderland fan who watched Meyler collapse after twisting his knee felt his pain. After a long period on the sidelines he has made a remarkable recovery and to see him be stretchered off again was heartbreaking.

All the best to his recovery.

Getting back to Heskey's awful miss he should have scored after Zenden lost possession to Downing to miss from two yards out.

The second half went in our favour as Gyan was brought on for Steeeed. His injury led to a controversial moment as Villa refused to play the ball out for Gyan being down on the floor. Once Villa won a free-kick Henderson challenged Heskey to ask why they never played the ball out and Emile pushed him in the face. Straight red for the English flop.

This encouraged Sunderland who took the lead through a host of chances went spurned.

The unlikely hero was Phil Bardsley who must have had these type of chances all through his career but never hit a ball so sweet.

As Sunderland gathered momentum the awful Bolo Zenden collected his second yellow card to allow Villa back into the game.

With Meyler, Cattermole, Zenden and Welbeck all being injured it must make chairman Niall Quinn think about a transfer this window.

With the arrival of Newcastle next weekend it is a must that we replenish a massively injured squad in order to keep our push up the league going.

2 points behind chelsea and 33 points in January will make me sleep happily tonight.

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