Aston Villa saw off Coventry 3-1 in the League Cup Round of 32 at the Coventry Building Society Arena on Tuesday evening. The visitors controlled the tempo from the opening whistle and never really looked back, even when the hosts found their way onto the scoresheet.
Tammy Abraham opened the scoring in the seventh minute, a well-worked finish from a tight angle. To be fair, Coventry had chances to respond, and Victor Torp pulled one back in the twenty-seventh minute. Ross Barkley restored the visitors' lead just before half-time with a forty-minute strike, and Abraham added his second in the fifty-ninth minute to put the tie beyond doubt.
Coventry made seven changes during the match, bringing on Tatsuhiro Sakamoto and Sidiki Cherif in the fifty-seventh and fifty-eighth minutes respectively. John McGinn and Ibrahim Mbaye came together for Villa in the sixty-fourth minute, while Tammy Abraham was withdrawn for George Hemmings in the sixty-ninth. The game was fairly even physically, with three yellow cards each.
The numbers tell the story of a match decided in moments. Villa registered nine shots on target to Coventry's five, and their expected goals of 2.69 stood in stark contrast to the hosts' 0.67. Four big chances created against none for Coventry showed where the visitors found their openings, and the old head of Barkley settled them down when it mattered.
Aston Villa have one foot in the next round, and Coventry's cup dreams are over. The hosts had lost their last three games before this—five goals against them across Brighton, Manchester City and Hull—so the result was perhaps no surprise, though the manner of defeat will rankle.
