Aston Villa claimed its first three points of the Premier League season as John McGinn, Douglas Luiz, Leon Bailey and Jhon Duran scored to secure an emphatic 4-0 home win over Everton on Sunday.
Unai Emery’s side, hammered 5-1 at Newcastle United on the opening weekend, scored two goals in either half to bounce back from that defeat and pile pressure on Everton, who have lost its first two games.
“Last week was tough for us, full respect for Newcastle, they did a job on us,” McGinn told Sky Sports.
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“We were hungry. We were upset from last week, we were hurting. We know we’re a good team, we’ve had a really good pre-season as well. Last week was a setback and we were so positive this week in trying to turn that around.”
“Today was a brilliant performance and we probably could have added a couple more.”
Villa opened the scoring through McGinn, who turned in Bailey’s cutback in the 18th minute to put the hosts ahead at Villa Park.
Six minutes later, it doubled its lead through Luiz’s cool penalty, after Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford fouled forward Ollie Watkins in the area.
Everton’s afternoon went from bad to worse when Dominic Calvert-Lewin went off injured in the 38th minute.
The striker, who has had to deal with a string of injuries over the past few seasons, left the field after a clash with Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez left him with a swollen face.
Everton, who lost 1-0 at home to Fulham last weekend, made an attacking substitution at halftime, bringing on forward Lewis Dobbin for midfielder Idrissa Gueye in an attempt to raise the tempo - but it made little difference.
The Merseyside club lost another key attacker to injury as Alex Iwobi was taken off with what looked like a hamstring issue, before Bailey scored Villa’s third.
Everton defender Michael Keane was to blame for the goal as his miscued clearance fell to Bailey, who hammered home a fierce strike to spark an early exodus of unhappy away fans.
Substitute Duran completed the rout in the 75th minute, calmly slotting past Pickford seconds after he came on, after he was allowed to run through on goal following a defensive mix-up between Ashley Young and Keane.
“That was not good enough, it was way off where we want to be, way of the consistency we need,” manager Sean Dyche told the BBC.
“They had just been punished themselves, they reacted and we need to react ourselves. We were miles off it today.”
Everton host Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday and Villa travel to Scotland to face Hibernian in the first leg of a Europa Conference League playoff tie on Wednesday.
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