West Bromwich Albion welcomed local rivals Aston Villa to The Hawthorns on Friday evening for the televised Championship clash, and as expected it was a pretty open, attacking affair.
The visitors took the lead with a massively deflected effort but Dwight Gayle had us back on level terms prior to the halftime break. El Ghazi completed his brace on the day in the second period and Jay Rodriguez answered his recent critics by getting himself on the scoresheet in stoppage-time.
Arguably there was a hand involved (as Rodriguez admitted) but the game was that finely balanced with chances, few in reality, should be able to deny that a draw was the fair result from the evening and head coach Darren Moore should definitely take the ‘spirit’ positives of coming from behind on two occasions, so there were positives.
According to statistics website Whoscored 29-year-old Rodriguez took our Man of the Match from the clash with a rating of 7.31.
The top five on the day were seen out by Matt Phillips (7.04), Harvey Barnes (7.03), Gareth Barry (6.91) and Gayle (6.81).
We’re still well in the mix though so onwards and upwards.