Aston Villa 2-1 Tottenham: Spurs eliminated from the FA Cup despite Tel's goal| All Football

Game is over and the final score is Aston Villa 2-1 Tottenham. Here is the match report.

2024/2025 FA Cup

2-1

Match Report

One by one the safety nets protecting Ange Postecoglou from a catastrophic fall into footballing oblivion are falling away.

If Liverpool hacked at a cord in demolishing Postecoglou’s Tottenham in one domestic cup competition last Thursday, then Aston Villa methodically undid a knot or two in the other one at Villa Park.

Now there is almost nothing left but a long drop down to the darkness for the Tottenham manager. Spurs remain in the Europa League but that’s where the good news begins and ends. The Premier League became an embarrassing and soulless slog long ago. Tottenham, weighed down by diminished confidence and a long injury list, sit in 14th position.

Tottenham have gone from a ‘must watch’ team to a ‘can’t bear to watch’ team and it’s now up to chairman Daniel Levy in terms of what he wishes to do about it.

If he believes in Postecoglou then he should categorically hold his nerve and there is a strong argument to support such a stance. Spurs will not go down and there is a group of senior players waiting to return. Some of the ones the Tottenham manager has at his disposal right now have been run into the ground over a sapping winter schedule. There has been no evidence to suggest they are not playing for their manager.

Equally, if Levy wishes to jettison yet another coach then there is a long list of poor results – just two domestic wins since December 19 and only two in the Premier League since November 23 – that he could point to as justification. At some point a manager has to get a tune out of what he has. He has to find a way.

Here in Birmingham against a superior Villa side, Levy’s name was sung unkindly throughout. Nothing new there. But after conceding a disastrous goal in the very first minute, Postecoglou’s team was lampooned by the travelling fans too. And that is a new and worrying development for Postecoglou. It tells of shifting sand beneath a manager’s feet.

Villa were also down on bodies here. Manager Unai Emery didn’t bring on Marcus Rashford until after the second goal. They were typically energetic and purposeful, though. Villa were assured where Tottenham were sketchy. They had clear method whereby Tottenham existed on moments.

And they didn’t make Tottenham’s mistakes. Villa worked hard for what they got but the truth is that they didn’t always have to. Spurs were too compliant and too giving. It’s a pattern under Postecoglou, no matter who is in his team, and it’s something that threatens his hold on his position quite gravely.

Here Tottenham gifted Villa a goal within 60 seconds. One minute was all it took. If we can’t describe it as typical then we can at least say that we weren’t that surprised.

It was a disaster for young Spurs goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky. The 21-year-old was at fault for the first one Tottenham conceded in the Carabao Cup defeat at Liverpool but this was on another level altogether.

Villa broke fast and direct through the centre of the Spurs midfield – something that was to be a feature of the first half – and when Morgan Rogers slipped the ball left to Jacob Ramsey, Tottenham were in trouble.

The odds were still against Ramsey as the angle was tight enough to favour the goalkeeper and what the Villa player delivered with his left foot shouldn’t really have been good enough.

All the shot had to commend it was power but that proved to be enough as Kinsky got his dive all wrong and the ball found the back of the net off the goalkeeper’s forearm.

Over the course of the game Kinsky did enough to almost redeem himself. He made a handful of good saves. But it’s impossible to quantify the damage done by that first error. He almost compounded it soon after, miscontrolling the ball on his own goal line, and that spoke volumes.

Spurs did improve. They were in the game for the last fifteen minutes of the first half and the first fifteen of the second. Over the course of the opening half an hour, though, they were in danger of being overrun as Villa tore through the heart of their midfield. John McGinn, Rogers and Youri Tielemans were particularly outstanding. Ollie Watkins is injured and Jhon Duran is gone. It was hard to tell.

Kinsky saved well from Leon Bailey and Tielemans while Rogers shot over and also had another effort saved.

In the middle of all that was a break away chance for Son Hueng-Min at the other end. Mikey Moore laid it on a plate but Son allowed Emiliano Martinez to save. Early in the second half, Son ran free but was caught by Villa substitute Lamare Bogarde. A moment later, he passed up another chance to shoot, shifting the ball to a team-mate in a less dangerous position. Son, at the heart of his club for the last decade, typifies his team’s struggles currently. Devoid of confidence, he looks a broken footballer.

Tottenham did carry a threat for a period but Villa were always the more likely and after Kinsky had saved brilliantly from Rogers, they closed the game out in the 65th minute.

This time the first Spurs error was from full-back Djed Spence who chipped the ball in to no-man’s land to concede possession needlessly. Villa then worked it down the right and when Donyell Malen crossed, Pedro Porro could only clear a matter of yards from under his own bar and Rogers rammed the ball high into the net.

As Villa Park celebrated, Emery slipped Rashford and another January signing, Asensio, on. With Tottenham all but beaten, opportunity knocked for Rashford in particular.

It was Spurs who provided the footnote, though, as new loan signing Mathys Tel, hitherto anonymous, converted a Dejan Kulusevksi cross at the far post in added time. But that was as good as it got and when Spence passed the ball straight out of play to signal the end of the game a few minutes later, it seemed appropriate.

Afterwards Postecoglou provided a passionate defence of his team and much of what he said followed a logical path. He finished by promising his team will one day be outstanding. Currently the line between optimism and realism appears blurred.