16 Conclusions from Aston Villa 2-1 Man United: Rogers, Amorim, title deeds and rocking-horse sh*t

Aston Villa ended a year in which they’ve turned Villa Park into a fortress with victory over the one team that has never had reason to fear a trip here.

Morgan Rogers’ double in a hard-fought 2-1 victory keeps Villa – who were not at their best – on the tails of Arsenal and Man City at the top of the table and perhaps (but only perhaps) more significantly extends their lead over any other Champions League chaser to a chasm-like seven points.

Unai Emery and his side really are on the road to something special, while there was encouragement, frustration and a brand new quandary for Ruben Amorim.

1. For all but the youngest Man United fans, there will have been something uncannily familiar about this game. An away team coming to a team on a formidable winning run and throwing absolutely everything at them, arguably having the better of the game on the balance of the 90 minutes, and then going home with absolutely nothing.

Old Trafford saw more games like this than any of care to remember in the 1990s and 2000s. That Villa Park is now the venue for such behaviour really is quite something. For the first time since before that era of United dominance – before the invention of football in 1992 even – Villa have won seven top-flight matches in a row. Things are happening here.

2. It shouldn’t really need reaffirming about a team that’s just won seven in a row – and 11 in 12 – but Aston Villa absolutely are in a title race now right up until they aren’t. What’s happened since the late winner against Arsenal goes against all narrative tradition for the unexpected team that suddenly inserts itself into a title situation with a thunderously significant and dramatic victory over a team that in that one moment suddenly becomes a direct rival.

Falling behind at West Ham last weekend could have ended the title charge as soon as it began. The visit of a Man United team that had lost to Villa here once in 30 years could have ended the title charge. But on Villa go.

If we can still talk about them as we are now in nine days’ time after trips to Stamford Bridge and the Emirates…

3. What’s absolutely true for now, though, is that Villa have placed themselves into a leading pack with Arsenal and City – on merit – and thoroughly distanced themselves from the chasing pack. The gap to fourth place is now seven points. It’s an astonishing position they find themselves in, especially after the way the season started with the now-infamous five-match streak without a win – four matches without even so much as a goal.

Wins for Arsenal and City on Saturday denied Villa the chance to hurt them, but Chelsea’s dropped points at Newcastle offered the chance to put real distance between them and the chasing pack. Taking that chance in the manner they did must be enormously pleasing for Unai Emery and his team.

4. Hardly revelatory to highlight Morgan Rogers as the star attraction here. Two stunning goals added to a collection of stunning goals this season, Leny Yoro given an absolute torrid, and a first-half trick duly repeated in the second.

He is the main reason Villa’s title challenge might have some legs. Villa are a very good side expertly trained and prepared by a brilliant manager; that puts them in position to do something special. But the kind of special they’re now in position to dream of requires individual players of individual brilliance within that rock-solid framework.

Villa would still be a good team without Rogers, but they wouldn’t be viable title contenders or anything like it. With the possible exception of Emi Martinez, we’re not sure that’s true of any other single player. Rogers is the difference maker for Villa, a man who produces moments like these to turn what was by their own now lofty standards a sub-par overall performance into three more points against an avowed bogey team.

5. Rogers also produces these moments when they really count, too. These were his first Villa Park goals of this Premier League season, but this is more praise than criticism. All his other goals in the league this season have come in victories from behind away from home. Vital goals at vital times in the toughest situations.

That applies just as much here, with both his goals sublime on their own aesthetic and technical level but also coming at vital times where Villa appeared to be second best.

6. That fact will be only part of what frustrates Ruben Amorim about what was genuinely one of his more impressive games as Man United manager; for all Rogers’ brilliance with both goals they were also avoidable from a United point of view.

Yoro had a desperately poor game in a generally sound United effort achieved despite great adversity. Yoro’s futile struggle to get to grips with Rogers was a key contributor to both goals, but especially the first.

7. There’s no real shame in being beaten by the threat and talent Rogers possesses; but there is in apparently being unaware of its existence.

With time ticking down in a first half United had rather impressively controlled, John McGinn fizzed a thigh-high pass out from midfield to Rogers on the left. His first touch was good enough to keep the ball alive but no more.

Yet as Rogers buzzed over towards the touchline to retrieve it, Yoro merely ambled in that general direction. By the time Rogers had danced inside onto his right foot and curled a shot inside Senne Lammens’ far post, Yoro still hadn’t twigged what was happening. Still hadn’t got close enough to even pressure the shot, never mind actually prevent or block it.

It takes nothing away from the brilliance of everything Rogers did to note he was given a bizarre helping hand by some astonishingly passive defending against Villa’s most conspicuous threat.

8. And then it all happened again, in much the same way and in with the general flow of the match at that point feeling much the same. Absolutely maddening for Amorim.

9. If only for the obvious reason that the United boss had got so much right. A great deal of it was firmly in ‘needs must’ territory but that is often the fire where the greatest solutions are forged.

With Casemiro suspended and Kobbie Mainoo unavailable through injury, Manuel Ugarte was handed a start in United’s midfield almost by default.

His jarring lack of quality on the ball remains a massive issue, and there was one conspicuous moment in the first half where Youri Tielemans picked his pocket all too easily, but he did at least perform a semi-functional destroyer’s role as the deepest point of a midfield triangle that, in the first half at least, featured Mason Mount and Bruno Fernandes as its more advanced corners.

10. This is not the first time in recent weeks that Amorim has moved away slightly from his trademark rigid and unshakeable adherence to 3-4-3 and it is most welcome. The acknowledgement that more bodies were needed in the middle of the park against an opponent of Villa’s quality is a sign of self-awareness. That’s a strength, not a weakness.

And it worked, it really did. It might be a stretch to say United dominated the first half, but they certainly controlled it, and went in deservedly level after Matheus Cunha profited from Patrick Dorgu’s good work in for once pressuring Villa into a mistake as they looked to play through the United press.

Matty Cash is so often such a reliable conduit for Emi Martinez to start such proceedings, but was badly caught out this time.

11. Yet by the time of those goals at the end of the first half, another potentially seismic moment for United’s whole season had already occurred. Bruno Fernandes picked up a muscle injury. It cannot be overstated what a big deal that is, both in its potential impact on United’s season and sheer rocking-horse-shit rareness.

Fernandes is that rare player seemingly capable of just playing all the football all the time with almost no ill-effects. Indeed, he seemed so perplexed by the entire concept of doing a hammy that he was unwilling to accept it had happened. Or perhaps unaware of what that painful sensation in his leg even was.

He limped and laboured on until half-time despite it being obvious to every single other person among the 40,000 inside Villa Park what had just happened.

12. His half-time withdrawal marked just the third time he had failed to reach 90 minutes in a Premier League game this season. In the previous two he came off after 85 and 87 minutes.

He has cleared the 3000-minute mark in the Premier League alone in each of his five full seasons at United. He has never missed more than two Premier League games in a season through injury.

In all he has featured in 212 out of 221 Manchester United league games since joining in the January transfer window of 2020. It’s a remarkable effort.

And if today’s injury is anything like what it looked like – and Amorim did not sound at all cheery about it post-match – then he and United could be entering whole new territory.

13. Every crisis presents an opportunity, though. This freakishly unusual Fernandes setback was spectacularly ill-timed for United and Amorim. As the United boss scoured a substitutes’ bench denuded by AFCON, injuries and suspensions, he will have seen precious little option.

One was Joshua Zirkzee, the only outfielder among the United replacements to have started a game in the Premier League this season. That was the obvious option, but an imperfect one for the task at hand given United were level at what is currently the toughest ground to visit in the country and had secured their foothold in the game on the back of winning that midfield battle.

14. Amorim went for Plan B and Lisandro Martinez, himself on the road back from serious injury but with midfield experience from his Ajax days. He did a fine job. The orientation of the triangle altered slightly; there were now two deeper-lying points in Ugarte and Martinez with Mount more advanced.

If one wanted to be mischievous, one might suggest Martinez’s 45 minutes in the role offered a more compelling case than Ugarte’s 73 before he duly made way for Zirkzee as United chased another equaliser.

At the very least, Martinez has put himself into the conversation should Fernandes’ absence be a lengthy one. He might even have got himself a goal and you’d certainly be surprised now to see Amorim revert back to his previous midfield shape for future games in and around this tariff of difficulty.

15. The other obvious opportunity comes for Mason Mount. His whole Man United career has been defined by Bruno Fernandes’ sheer reliability in terms of both appearances and output. Even in recent weeks when he has proved rather nicely that he absolutely can play alongside United’s star man it has been in a support-act kind of way.

But with Mount playing the best football of his United career in that time and now seeing the field quite literally cleared for him, we do wonder. He’s something of a forgotten man but 2026 could yet prove a big one for him with both club and country; we know Thomas Tuchel doesn’t need much excuse to call up players he knows he can trust, and few Englishmen are more firmly inside that particular circle than Mount.

16. The final word has to go to Villa, though, who have completed an extraordinary year with an extraordinary set of home numbers. In all competitions they played 27 games at Villa Park in 2025. They won 22, drew four and lost only one.

Among the teams beaten here this year have been both their current title rivals, six of the other seven members in all of what we’ll reluctantly and frankly inaccurately label the Big Eight, as well as the literal best team in Europe.

And it really does set up the possibility of 2026 being even more memorable.