Half time: Villa 0 Irons 0
Well, it had it’s moments and the biggest may have come in injury time when Fabianski saved brilliantly from McGinn.
The Scottish midfielder thumped in a thunderbolt but the Hammers keeper went down low to hi left to make a fine save.
The hosts had been busy from the start without creating any real chances and the Hammers were happy to adopt a more patient approach if, at times, that may have led them to overplay.
However, they had two good chances in the first 10 minutes when Yarmolenko’s shot was blocked and Noble burst forward to see a snap shot saved.
But they were the only occasions on which we looked likely to score although Lanzini was dangerous every time he was on the ball.
However his reputation has preceded him and he was generally surrounded by defenders when he tried to break through.
The Hammers had been grateful to Fabianski earlier in the half when he raced from goal to punch clear as E;Ghazi – who was injured in the incident closes in.
It was very much a case of Villa#s energy and hustle and bustle against a classieer side wh were looking for the killer move.
Entertaining, if non productive, but it’s all set up for a decent second period.
Second period produced another awful performance for a referee who should be retired from the game. Shocking sending off, mostly pointless bookings across two halves for both teams, should have booked El Ghazi for nutting Mings or worse, how McGinn wasn’t booked for s dangerous tackle on Haller god only knows… referee -50 out of 10 when you put the ratings up. As for the game a point is fair but we need to improve our final ball and dead ball delivery as we didn’t find the player once.