Aston Villa survive shock defeat

Posted on Friday, December 5th, 2008 at 10:05 am and is filed under News.

Aston Villa snuck through to the next round of the UEFA Europa League last night, despite suffering a shock 2-1 defeat to FK Zilina at Villa Park.

Zilina surprised their hosts by surging to a 2-0 lead in the match, with Vladimir Leitner and Peter Styvar scoring for their club. Villa pulled a goal back as Nathan Delfouneso scored on debut for his club, however the home side were unable to find the equaliser.

The result left Aston Villa depending on favourable results in other Group F matches, and Hamburg duly obliged with a 2-0 defeat of Slavia. The result allowed Villa to hang on to second place in Group F and cruise through to the next round of the UEFA Europa League.

“This was an opportunity for some of the players in our squad to play and I still hoped we could win the game,” Villa manager Martin O’Neill said of his decision to rotate the players in his squad. “This was our idea of rotation.”