Remi Garde impressed with Aston Villa’s performance

Premier League leaders Manchester City travelled to Villa Park to face Aston Villa on Sunday afternoon, as they were keen to extend their lead on top of the points table.

This is a young player who has consistently performed excellently in Ligue 1, with 36 appearance last season and 4 goals, but more importantly having already established himself under Tim Sherwood, making 11 appearances this season to date, he has shown the potential to improve even further which will provide Garde with a solid foundation on which to start his revival.

Delph, then Villa captain, was heavily linked with City at the end of last season but he appeared to rule out a move when he spoke out to “set the record straight” and say, “I’m not leaving”.

Remi Garde’s first match in charge of Aston Villa is about as rough a matchup as he could have feared.

On form, there’s no reason to think that this match won’t be anything but an absolute pasting from Manchester City – Villa’s defense has been dreadfully poor and their attack fairly inept.

Following their reshuffle, City had a chance to catch Villa on the break, but although Yaya Toure’s instinctive pass sent Sterling bursting through the middle, the England winger stumbled inside the box at the crucial moment and subsequent protests he had been fouled by Ciaran Clark were ignored by the referee. Running in behind the full-back, Navas sprinted to the byline and cut back for de Bruyne perfectly, but the Belgian kicked the ball against his standing leg in comical fashion and Villa could breathe again.

“They (Villa) had one chance and after that we dominated the game”.

The corner comes in and the header from close range strike the woodwork, the resulting follow up is just wide and City go so close late on there.

The midfielder has had his critics this season and he does not grab the headlines often but his all-action display aided Villa. Tough game to handicap this one but I am going to take the overs.

After Pellegrini reconfigured City’s attack at the interval, with Sterling swapping places with De Bruyne, the visitors began to lay siege to the Villa goal.

– Villa failed to register a single shot on target for the first time in a Premier League match since August 2014 (vs Newcastle United). Live coverage of the game will be on Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 1 HD.

“We fought for each other and we played a few good football as well”.

Pellegrini met Garde briefly, just as the Frenchman was embarking on his managerial career with Lyon as he visited former Arsenal team-mate Patrick Vieira, now City’s head of elite development, at the club’s training base. We had three of four very clear chances to score and we didn’t, but we did enough to win’.

“Of course we tried to score, but we couldn’t”, City manager Manuel Pellegrini said.

“It is very important to repeat what we did against Sevilla in Champions League and not to think that because we played well in the last game we can do it in exactly the same way”.