A strong month for Villans midfielder Tom Cleverly has Aston Villa looking like one of the hottest teams in the Premier League
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Aston Villa defeated West Ham United by a score of 1-0 thanks to a great connection from rising star Jack Grealish to midfielder Tom Cleverley.
With Aston Villa falling to 16th earlier in the day after Leicester City dominated Southampton, Tim Sherwood’s club could have used another big performance from star forward Christian Benteke in order to keep their distance from relegation – instead he got that performance from the teenage sensation Jack Grealish.
Grealish, who emerged as an effective starter in late April, made one of the biggest contributions of his young career on perfectly placed shot in the first half that was finished off by Cleverley to give Aston Villa a 1-0 lead.
Though Aston Villa had possession for nearly 60% of the game and made an incredible 14 shots and 5 shots on goal, they were unable to finish the job in the second half and allowed West Ham to stay in the game.
Ashley Westwood in particular could have been the goat of the afternoon had West Ham been able to capitalize on this narrow miss late in the match.
There was another brief scare for the Villans as superstar Christian Benteke went down just before extra time with a head injury that turned out to be a a serious-looking poke in the eye – yet no cards were shown by the match officials, much to Benteke’s chagrin.
In the end though, Villans goalie Shay Given didn’t even have such a hard workload as West Ham was able to record just one shot on goal the entire game – which led to an easy save by Given. And with that, Aston Villa recorded its 4th victory in the last month – and is now four points clear of Hull City’s place in relegation.
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