Nicolas Jackson scored twice in the space of an hour to give Aston Villa a 2-1 win over Manchester City at Villa Park on Saturday, ending the perfect start Enzo Maresca had made to his time as City manager and producing the most eye catching result anywhere in the Premier League this weekend.
City had arrived in the West Midlands unbeaten in the league this season, sitting top of the table on 21 points from seven games and growing into genuine title favourites under their new head coach. They left with that record gone, beaten by a forward who cost Villa a club record £65 million fee in the summer and who is now repaying it in the most direct way possible.
Villa’s win moves them up to sixth in the table and gives Unai Emery his first home league victory of the season, a timely response after his side lost three of their opening five Premier League matches. For City, it is simply the first defeat of Maresca’s reign, and the first time this season they have left a ground without at least a point.
Jackson strikes twice to settle it
The afternoon turned early. In the seventh minute, John McGinn found space down the left and played the ball into the area, where Marc Guehi failed to deal with it cleanly. Jackson read the mistake quickest, nipped in ahead of the City defence and finished low past Gianluigi Donnarumma to put Villa ahead inside ten minutes.
City responded the way a side that had not lost all season tends to: patiently, and with increasing control of the ball. Zion Suzuki had to be alert to deny Rayan Cherki just after the quarter hour, and Iliman Ndiaye struck a post shortly afterwards as City searched for an equaliser that eventually arrived just after half time. Ndiaye turned provider in the 52nd minute, whipping in a cross that Erling Haaland met with a firm header to level the scores.
The lead did not last. Within a few minutes of Haaland’s goal, Ibrahim Mbaye drove at the Villa Park crowd’s end of the pitch and cut the ball back for Jackson, who took it first time and sent it under Donnarumma to restore Villa’s advantage just past the hour mark. It was Jackson’s sixth goal in his last six appearances in all competitions, a run that has turned him from a club record outlay into Villa’s most reliable source of goals.
Villa’s need for goals this season has been obvious, and it came alongside one of the biggest squad overhauls in the club’s recent history. Ollie Watkins, their all time leading Premier League scorer, left for Al Hilal in Saudi Arabia for a reported £51 million at the end of the summer window, one of several long serving names to depart alongside him. Jackson arrived as his replacement that same week, and after a quiet first few weeks finding his feet in a struggling side, he now looks like exactly the kind of goalscorer Villa paid a club record fee to secure.
City dominated the ball but not the moments that mattered
The numbers told their own story. City finished with 63% of the possession and 1.79 expected goals to Villa’s 0.61, the kind of territorial and chance creating dominance that would usually be enough to win most Premier League matches comfortably. Suzuki kept them at arm’s length when it mattered: he pushed a Josko Gvardiol strike onto the bar shortly after Jackson’s second, and Ian Maatsen was on hand to clear a late Haaland effort off the line in the 89th minute as City searched desperately for a way back in.
Guehi, whose error had led to Villa’s opener, was withdrawn at half time, with Maresca explaining afterwards that it was a precaution with his defender already on a yellow card rather than anything more serious. The City manager was blunt about where the game had been lost. “We lost the game because we were not being clinical enough in their box,” he said, pointing to the gulf between the chances his side created and what they actually managed to put away.
That is not a complaint many could make about Jackson, who took both of the chances that mattered and was named player of the match with barely a dissenting voice.
A different kind of afternoon for both clubs
For City, the defeat does not change their position at the top of the table dramatically, but it does end the sense of inevitability that had built up around Maresca’s start to life at the club. Having gone unbeaten through their first seven league games, a first defeat was always going to arrive at some point. That it came away at a Villa side who had looked, only a few weeks ago, like one of the division’s struggling teams will sting rather more than most.
For Villa, it is the clearest sign yet that their season is turning. Emery’s side have now put together back to back wins after a difficult opening block of fixtures, and doing it by beating the league leaders at home gives them a platform heading into the next run of games. Whatever doubts followed Jackson’s move from Chelsea in the summer, they feel like a distant memory after an afternoon like this.
The title race itself remains wide open at the top of the table, with City’s closest challengers all chasing points of their own elsewhere in the division this weekend. Results like this one are exactly why nobody at the top can afford to relax, and exactly why afternoons like this one at Villa Park are worth paying attention to.
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