Aston Villa won the bragging rights once again as they beat Birmingham City in their own back yard on Sunday afternoon.
Jamie Redknapp has labelled the attack on Jack Grealish during Aston Villa’s 1-0 win over Birmingham City as ‘disgusting’ and he worryingly claimed that it could result in Second City derbies being played ‘behind closed doors’.
Early in the first half, a fan ran onto the pitch, smacked Grealish from behind before he was restrained by the players and escorted away by stewards.
As the fan was being led away, he was being cheered by sections of the home crowd, but Grealish got the last laugh as he scored the only goal of the game in the second half to win his team the bragging rights and the points.
Speaking to Sky Sports Football moments after the incident took place (10/03/2019 at 1:10 pm), Redknapp slammed the behaviour of the individual and issued some worrying comments about what might happen.
“It’s happened before in this fixture as well, was it Enckleman?,” Redknapp questioned on Sky Sports Football. “I remember that being a night game.
“Now, they have tried to change it to a 12 kick off to stop people maybe drinking too much. But you are still getting this problem. It’s disgusting, it’s disgusting. That game now will probably have to be played behind closed doors for the foreseeable future.”
There is no doubt that Villa were the better team throughout the 90 minutes, with the game overall being a scrappy affair, but the away team did prove their attacking worth in the second half.
When Dean Smith introduced John McGinn and Andre Green into the action, the duo changed the game as they pushed their team further up the field which allowed the likes of Tammy Abraham and Grealish to get into the game.
That was when Grealish produced his moment of magic. After McGinn did ever so well to protect the ball on the right-hand side, he played a ball to the other flank which was collected by Neil Taylor, he played it to Grealish, who proceeded to make a run into the penalty area before calmly guiding home the winner.
As a result, Villa have completed the league double over their rivals as the Blues have not beaten their neighbours in the league in over a decade.
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