Walking back towards Hammersmith following the game, I have to admit that the late winner, from Chris Baird, had cheered me up no end.
With the nights starting to draw in, we`re getting to the nitty-gritty stage of the season whereby, sometimes, you have to grind out results rather than play entertaining football that has the punters on the edge of their seats, and that is exactly what we did yesterday against a limited Aston Villa side.
Sat in the main stand, the excitement levels were immediately increased when it was confirmed that Berbatov and Petric would be starting. I had visions of Dimitar controlling the game and providing some defence splitting short balls for us to capitalise on.
Well I was sort of right because that`s what happened early on. Berbatov looked to be in commanding form and only the antics of Guzan, in the Villa goal allied with some poor finishing from Richardson kept the score level.
But slowly and surely, the game sunk into a malaise whereby each side cancelled each other out and nothing occurred to get you off your seat and pumping those arms.
In fact, as the sands of time began to ebb away, I was half tempted to take an early exit and get home early in order to hit the night-life later on that night, but thankfully I didn`t.
With a mere six minutes to go, Craven Cottage erupted when an in-swinging corner from John Arne Riise was expertly flicked home by Chris Baird, only his third goal in one hundred and fifty games.
It was, I have to admit, one of those games, just like I`ve mentioned, where you have to grind a result out, and we did just that!
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