Collins brings an end to the boos

Aston Villa 1 Newcastle 0:GERARD HOULLIER and Aston Villa have some breathing space. A first-half header from James Collins, who was playing his first game at Villa Park since he was fined two weeks' wages for his part in the drunken bust-up at a health spa last month, lifted the midlands club up to 14th place, five points clear of the relegation zone.

Boos greeted the final whistle in the last home match but this time there was jubilation and a palpable sense of relief.

This was only Villa’s seventh league win under Houllier and, with the bottom four clubs all losing this weekend, the significance of three points could not be overstated. Villa deserved them on the balance of play, although there were a couple of anxious moments to endure in the closing stages when Peter Lovenkrands squandered two decent chances to level. Little wonder Houllier puffed out his cheeks and loosened his tie when he sat down for his post-match press conference. “It was a bit edgy,” the Villa manager said.

Houllier praised the “desire and commitment” of his players on an afternoon when Collins and Richard Dunne, the terrible twosome who were at the centre of the off-field fracas that wrecked a team-bonding exercise, demonstrated their worth on the pitch. Collins’s third goal of the season was crucial but so, too, was a second clean sheet in 26 matches.

“The incident is in the past,” Houllier said. “I told them: ‘I’m experienced enough to put that to one side and pass on to something else.’ And they did the same.”

The breakthrough arrived in controversial circumstances. Joey Barton, who was in one of those moods where he could have had an argument in an empty room, accused Ashley Young of diving after he was penalised for a foul on the Villa winger close to the touchline. To rub salt into Barton’s wounds, Young’s whipped free-kick picked out Collins, whose excellent glancing header looped beyond Steve Harper. Cue another Barton protest as he angrily pursed the referee, Stuart Attwell.

Alan Pardew, the Newcastle manager, felt that Barton had a point. “(Young’s) the most fouled player in the division and we kept saying: ‘You touch him and he goes over’,” said Pardew. “I think it was in Joey’s mind that it was something we talked about. And he hardly touched him and down he went again. That’s a fact. I didn’t think it was a free-kick.”

Houllier disagreed: “It was a free-kick, even the fourth official said that. He (Young) didn’t go down cheaply.”

Newcastle had been the better side up until that point but they failed to convert the chances that arrived during a bright opening. Nile Ranger, who was making his first Premier League start, after Shola Ameobi was forced to pull out with a knee injury, shot tamely at Brad Friedel, and Barton, in a moment that summed up his afternoon, made a terrible mess of a far-post header from the excellent Jose Enrique’s left-wing cross.

That was the last from Newcastle as an attacking threat until the final minutes. Lovenkrands should have done better with a free header from Barton’s cross that was too close to Friedel, who made another save from the Newcastle forward in injury time, when he blocked an angled drive with his legs. “We couldn’t get enough pressure on them to make their nervousness count,” said Pardew, who lamented the absence of several key players through injury and suspension.

Villa, though, were entitled to believe they should have put the game beyond Newcastle before the nervous finale. Darren Bent should have doubled their lead when he had the ball in the net on the stroke of half-time but the assistant referee incorrectly judged that he had taken up an offside position. Not that Houllier was complaining come the end. “I think we deserved it,” he said. “But there is still a lot of work to be done.”

Guardian Service