If anyone thought Aston Villa would be rusty after two weeks without a kick, they were dead wrong. Unai Emery’s men didn’t just turn up in Northern Italy; they sucked the soul out of the Stadio Renato Dall’Ara with a clinical 3-1 win over Bologna in the first leg of their Europa League quarter-final.
For 40 minutes, it looked like a long night for the Villans. Bologna, led by a relentless Jonathan Rowe, were all over them. Santiago Castro actually had the ball in the net midway through the first half, only for VAR to play the villain and chalk it off for a marginal offside. Then Lewis Ferguson rattled the crossbar with a strike that had Emi Martínez rooted to the spot. Bologna were dominant, slick, and looked every bit the side that hadn’t lost at home in 20 European matches.
Clinical Chaos
But football isn’t about how many shots you take; it’s about who blinks first. Just before the break, Bologna keeper Federico Ravaglia—standing in for the injured Skorupski—made a mess of a Youri Tielemans corner. Ezri Konsa didn’t need a second invitation, nodding home his first of the season into an empty net. Total smash and grab.
The second half was the Ollie Watkins show. Just six minutes after the restart, Emiliano Buendía bullied Heggem off the ball, and Watkins did what he does best—slit-film precision, slotting it through Ravaglia’s legs. Bologna pulled one back late through the impressive Rowe, but Watkins had the final word, smashing home a 94th-minute dagger to make it 3-1.
Villa take a massive two-goal cushion back to Birmingham for the second leg on April 16th. For Bologna, it’s a harsh lesson in Premier League ruthlessness. They had 19 shots to Villa’s eight, but at this level, you don’t get prizes for “effort.”
