We shall never know if Villa would have gone on and won the game but the game may well have been decided on what happened in the first five minutes of the match. Does not matter if its the first minute or the last on any other day Dowd would have shown the culprit a straight red, but l am afraid the referee bottled it. Not only did Dowd forget to issue a certain red card he forget to even issue a yellow one which makes some of his decisions later in the game all the more puzzling.
It could well have been a different story and led to a happier ending(for me at least) going 1-0 up and Manchester Untied down to ten men with the added bonus of their talisman not even on the pitch, but this is the real world and so often you will find the lord gives and the lord takes away, which just happened to my hopes and dreams yesterday.
In truth, we never deserved to win, once again the young guns of Villa never stepped up to the plate, that bis apart from Milner who showed what a very good player he is becoming. The likes of Young and Downing offered brief glimpses but they were very brief. If as so many Villa fans talk of them being England squad players this was the game to put their names forward and show themselves to the world. For me neither done that.
The Normally reliable Dunne and Collins both suffered lapses of concentration that resulted in Villa being punished. They both managed to somewhat redeem themselves with blocks and tackles but by then the damage had been done with the Owen equaliser
Once the best player in English football had had his say is was all over, brief and sporadic attacks on Kuszcaks goal, which all amounted to not very much and one of the biggest days in the last fourteen years was all but over.
A day that had promised so much had left me feeling empty, O'Neil can say that we played well for so long but in truth that once again hides the fact we never deserved the glory. The best team won on the day.
My last memory of the final will be Phil Dowd walking up the steps to collect his winners medal.
Dreams can come true, but you need to do more to show for it..
Maybe just maybe the FA Cup??
That is all.
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