Aston Villa 0 - 1 Manchester City

[andy villa]

Darius Vassell returned to haunt Aston Villa as his goal helped Manchester City to a 1-0 win.

The result leaves Villa still unsure, mathematically at least, of their Premiership status, with Birmingham six points adrift and two games still to play.

The major talking points occurred late in the game, with Vassell firing City ahead with 20 minutes left and then Villa controversially seeing a late leveller ruled out for offside.

The first half was refreshingly open for an end-of-season encounter as both sides looked to be positive, but recent results had taken their toll on confidence and there was a lack of real quality.

Within the first few minutes there was a chance at either end, with Sylvain Distin sending a crunching header just wide from Albert Riera's corner, and David James reacting quickly to rush off his line and deny Milan Baros.

The livewire Baros was a constant threat and set the tone for a sustained spell of Villa pressure with a fierce effort from distance which flew wide.

James did well to parry Olof Mellberg's close-range header from Gareth Barry's cross, while Barry himself bamboozled the City defence with a jinking run before shooting just wide, as David O'Leary's side looked to turn the screw.

City gradually gained a foothold in the game and started to carve out one or two opportunities of their own, but there was always an audible gasp whenever a pass was played back to James, who nearly gifted Villa a lead on a couple of occasions.

At times Riera posed problems for the home side's defence with his creativity, but one brilliant dribble down the left ran out of steam just as an opening was yawning, allowing Cahill to tackle.

City started the second half brightly, with the hitherto anonymous Vassell finally starting to get on the ball more, but his clever cut-back to Joey Barton was wasted by the England hopeful, who blazed over from outside the area.

Moments later Riera forced a superb save out of Thomas Sorensen, connecting beautifully with a first-time strike only to be kept at bay by an acrobatic stop.

Half time substitute Antoine Sibierski had a major influence on the game, helping City to keep possession much more comfortably and use it effectively, but Villa remained dangerous on the counter-attack.

Youngster Gabriel Agbonlahor replaced Baros and injected some pace into the Villa frontline, and he tested James twice in the space of five minutes.

The deadlock was eventually broken by Vassell after 71 minutes, collecting a pass from Claudio Reyna after a flowing move down the right and shooting on the turn. Mellberg could be faulted for not being tighter on Vassell, while Sorensen was flat-footed as the striker's soft shot trickled past him.

City briefly turned on the style and Sibierski fired narrowly wide following another eye-catching attack, before Villa rallied and poured forward in search of an equaliser.

Kevin Phillips was brought on for Liam Ridgewell as O'Leary looked for a share of the points, but barring a speculative shot from Aaron Hughes, there was little in the way of goalmouth incident in the final quarter of an hour.

The Villa Park crowd was not impressed by their team's endeavours, until Phillips put the ball in the back of the net in the dying seconds of the game. However, his goal was disallowed, harshly, for offside as City held on for the win.