And replaced him with Colombian kid striker Duran who was handed only his second start of the season – one month after his previous one in the Carabao Cup against Wycombe!
It was Emery’s reward for Duran’s stunning winner from the bench against Bayern Munich last time out in Europe.
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The burning question was could big Jhon do it from the start?
There was a return too for Villa skipper McGinn, who made his first start since he damaged his hamstring against Wolves last month.
However, it would have been interesting to discover the Scot’s thoughts about being welcomed by a huge Tifo of three snarling lions draped from the Holte End.
Any thoughts that Villa would be forced to break down a blanket Bologna defence were swiftly dispelled because the visitors were first to go for goal within two minutes.
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Skipper Sam Beukema caught out Ezri Konsa with a raking pass out of defence to release winger Dan Ndoye.
The Swiss international pulled the ball back to Kacper Urbanski but the Pole sliced his shot weakly wide from the edge of the box.
Vincenzo Italiano’s men have only managed one point from their opening two games and probably felt they needed to leave here with three points to avoid becoming also-rans.
And no-one at Villa Park was complaining as the play raged from end to end like a basketball match.
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Villa forced a string of early corners and free-kicks as Youri Tielemans pinned Bologna back around their own penalty area.
Pau Torres was crowded out at the near post and Skorupski frantically fisted clear under pressure from Duran.
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But Bologna were menacing on the break and Martinez beat out a fierce effort from Dallinga after more brilliant build up work from Ndoye.
He then had to get down low to smother a shot on the run from Riccardo Orsolini, who was then snuffed out at the backpost by Ian Maatsen.
The Italian winger was then booked for a foul on Maatsen as this pair fought and scratched for every inch of turf.
McGinn tested Skorupski with a low shot which the Pole in goal, palmed away at full stretch before Dallinga snatched at a chance, firing straight at Martinez.
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It was high-octane stuff and Villa ended the first half by carving out two great chances for Morgan Rogers.
However his first effort flew a fraction wide from 20 yards, before Skorupski defied him with an outstrtched right boot, when the Villa man might have been better off dinking the keeper.
Emery sent on Barkley for Amadou Onana at the break while Orsolini made way for Jens Odgaard for Bologna.
But the pace increased if anything!
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Lykogiannis was booked for leaving one on Leon Bailey before Konsa nodded a Maatsen cross down for Bailey who swept his shot agonisingly wide.
But Bologna hit back and Stefan Posch added even more spice with a sizzler which flew just wide.
Tensions were running high and Remo Freuler was booked for a foul on Konsa, which sent Bologna berserk as they claimed Konsa had fouled Giovanni Fabbian seconds earlier.
Even Emery was getting heated as he fell out with Vincenzo Italiano before making up with a sporting handshake.
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But Italiano was cursing the Spaniard again seconds later as Villa hit his side with a quickfire double.
From the resultant free-kick McGinn swept in a curling delivery, Barkley and Duran failed to connect and the ball curled beyond Skorupski and in at the far post.
Cue a Holte End frenzy as McGinn was swamped by his celebrating team-mates.
VAR checked for a potential handball against Barkley but nothing amiss was found.
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Villa sniffed blood and killed Bologna off nine minutes later.
Rogers delivered a delicious cross and Duran thrust out a leg to beat his Columbian international teammate Jhon Lucumi to divert the ball beyond Skorupski.
It was the 20-year-old’s final touch of the game before he was replaced by Watkins in a triple substitution.
For reasons best known to him he threw his toys out of the pram, punching his seat after he was replaced.
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But Villa will live with the tantrums because the kid is a star!
The four-man crew finished sixth in the Beijing Olympics in 2022, which was the best result of all the Team GB skeleton and bobsleigh teams who endured a tough Games.
When he first joined the squad they were not funded, but bobsleigh did subsequently receive £1.5m from UK Sport before Beijing. For the Milan 2026 cycle, bobsleigh has been awarded £2.8m after a £900,000 uplift in August 2023.
To put it into context, the powerhouse Germany teams spend £2m a year on research and development alone.
“We do the best with what we have,” Lawrence said.
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“The extra UK Sport funding has allowed us to look at different R&D bits, new two-man and four-man sleds, different aero parts etc.
“That costs a lot of money, but when you’re in a sport that is won by hundredths of a second, it’s all those little bits that help.”
The season following the Beijing Games was British bobsleigh’s most successful non-Olympic year, but the start of Lawrence’s 2023-24 campaign was delayed after Hall had back surgery. On his return, the four-man team carried on where they had left off with a podium in Lillehammer.
They are currently in Norway training before the season starts in Altenberg, Germany in December. The countdown is firmly on to the 2026 Winter Olympics.
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The track in Cortina is still being constructed, which Lawrence said will pose a new challenge for the teams.
“The main thing will be who gets to grips with the track the quickest,” he explained.
But he is bullish about Team GB’s medal chances as they aim for a first bobsleigh gold since 1964.
“Obviously we want gold, but we will be looking for an Olympic medal,” said Lawrence.
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“Anything less than that and we’ll come away disappointed because we know how good we are.
“We’re competing against the same people day in and day out from the World Cup circuit so we know we can beat them. It’s just having those stars aligned.”
Ex-Manchester City defender Nedum Onuoha discusses how his former team-mate Vincent Kompany will manage Bayern Munich in this season’s Champions League.
The year 2023 was a defining one for wrestling, not for any podium finish but for the large-scale protests by Indian wrestlers, primarily women, against the then Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, whom they accused of sexual harassment.
It was unprecedented, both in terms of the scale and longevity. Sakshi Malik, Vinesh Phogat and Bajrang Punia were the faces of the protest, with the agitators demanding that Singh be removed from the post and charged and tried in the court of law.
In May last year, as part of the protest, the wrestlers, led by the trio, were detained by Delhi Police when they attempted to march towards the new Parliament building for women’s ‘Mahapanchayat’. Alleging mistreatment by the cops and the Union government, the wrestlers decided to immerse their medals in Ganga, as a mark of protest.
The police high-handedness came in for severe criticism from eminent sportspersons like Abhinav Bindra, Sunil Chhetri and Kapil Dev.
But, what was set to be the ultimate show of defiance, ended in a whimper as the wrestlers returned without immersing the medals in Ganga, after they were ‘convinced’ by the Khap and farmer leaders to drop the plan. Senior farmer leaders Sham Singh Malik and Naresh Tikait, reportedly, collected their medals in their turbans and sought five days’ time then from the grapplers to resolve the issue.
However, Malik has now revealed in her autobiography Witness that things were not what met the eye on that day. Excerpts published by The Hindu present Malik’s version of the chain of events. On one hand, Punia was speaking to Home Minister Amit Shah over the phone. On the other, Tikait, who, as Malik wrote, was “one of the leaders of the farm rights agitation from a year ago and whom we respected as an elder of the Jat community we belonged to”, asked them to refrain from immersing their medals in the Ganga till he talked to them.
Malik further wrote that the crowd got bigger as they waited, and her heart began to sink. “And then, suddenly, from the midst of that crowd, Tikait emerged. He unwrapped the safa on his head, walked up to each of us, took our medals and placed them in that cloth. He told us the medals were the pride of the country and he’d make things all right.
“Then he walked away from the ghat, leaving us there by ourselves.”
Malik added that the wrestlers soon realised their mistake, that what “was supposed to be a great act of defiance had turned into a complete farce”. “All of us sat in a car in a state of complete bewilderment. We were crying.”
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The wrestlers were then taken to Tikait’s house, where he addressed a press conference, claiming credit for stopping the grapplers from immersing the medals in the river, Malik wrote.
“It was his moment to shine. As for us, we had been completely dishonoured.
“Later, people would tell us that Tikait, for all his image of confronting the government, had a history of selling out movements he had been part of, and he’d done the same to us. I don’t know the truth about that, but the fact is that the mistake of actually handing over the medals was made by us.”
IT IS 22 years ago since one of the most under the radar but magical European nights occurred at Newcastle – and Steve Harper got an incredible memento.
Tino Asprilla’s incredible hat-trick in the 3-2 victory over Barcelona back in 1997 still takes some beating for those members of the Toon Army old enough to remember it.
However, another club famed for wearing black and white have also suffered disappointment under the lights at St. James’ – and it was packed with superstars.
Alessandro Del Piero, Lillian Thuram, Pavel Nedved, Edgar Davids and Gianluigi Buffon were all part of the Juventus side that suffered a 1-0 loss to Sir Bobby Robson’s Newcastle on this very day in 2002.
The Magpies had lost each of their opening group matches that year with a 2-0 reverse at Dynamo Kyiv, a 1-0 home setback to Feyenoord and a 2-0 defeat in Turin leaving them with a mountain to climb.
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The probability of them reaching the next round was slim – so much so that Sir Bobby opted to play back-up ‘keeper Harper in order to just give him experience.
But it turned into an evening that the Toon legend would never forget as Andy Griffin scored the only goal to secure the win.
It was a result that reignited their Champions League campaign, with following victories over Kyiv and in Feyenoord meaning they completed a remarkable turnaround to reach the next stage, where they would eventually be eliminated.
Newcastle’s former Geordie goalie coach Simon Smith, who has also worked under the likes of Ruud Gullit, Steve Bruce and Eddie Howe during his two spells at his boyhood club, still remembers the game as if it was just yesterday.
He told Sun Sport: “We thought that we were out. We hadn’t won one of our opening three games and then we had Juventus, who were packed with great players.
“But, lo and behold, we won 1-0. We then went on and beat Feyenoord to get through into the next stage.
I was earning £10,000 a week at Newcastle before I went to jail and I’d still be in the Premier League now if I’d behaved
“There was no pressure at all. It really just felt like we hadn’t done very well and we were going out and Sir Bobby changed his team.
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“I know Harps played and I think Sir Bobby just wanted to give him some experience of playing in Europe, not thinking that we’d go any further. But he kept a clean sheet.”
And Smith’s work was only just beginning once the full-time whistle had gone.
He continued: “My main memory of that night is that Harps was desperate to swap shirts with Buffon.
“He gave me his shirt to go and swap and I had to go and stand outside of their changing room and ask their staff if Buffon would exchange his shirt after they had just lost.
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“To be fair to him, he came out and it was a real classic pink and black goalie shirt, and he swapped it for Harps’ blue Newcastle one. A quite remarkable night really.”
Smith enjoyed plenty of memorable moments sat in the dug-out at St. James’ – two of which came when the ground was being redeveloped into the huge arena it is now.
He said: “I’ve had two really magical experiences of the place that will always stand out. One was when they built the new stands with the top on.
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“We had an afternoon out, just before it was finished, and went right to the top and looked down and we all just thought ‘oh my, this is unbelievable’.
“Then they arranged for me to take Shay Given and Steve Harper to test out the floodlights when nobody else was there.
“We pitched up at St. James’ one night, just the three of us, to have a kickaround and they switched all of the lights on and it was all to make sure that the new lights would not be shining in the eyes of the goalies.
“So we did corners, free-kicks etc to make sure that the lights were on the right angle and it was totally unbelievable to be there, just the three of us with no crowd. That was very special.
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“The other special day was after Sir Bobby’s death and the tribute at the Leazes end with the scarves, flags – that was totally unbelievable.”
Last season’s Premiership was highly competitive between most sides, but Newcastle finished 27 points adrift at the bottom after losing all 18 games.
It was beginning to look like a similar scenario in the new campaign as they opened with four defeats, but victory moved them one point behind Exeter, albeit still in 10th place.
With the demise of London Irish, Worcester Warriors and Wasps still fresh in the memory, Diamond understands that the slimmed-down 10-team competition needs a competitive Newcastle outfit, as they prepare to face Gloucester on Saturday.
“I know we’re not going to win every game, but I need us to be competitive every game,” he said.
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“Sometimes that is more important than some wins. If we don’t win, we still pick up points and pick up respect.
“And opponents start to think, ‘Crikey, we’ve got to go to Newcastle and win’.
“Newcastle have gone up and down a couple of times, but they have never been looked at in the way it was starting to look.”
ABU DHABI – The UFC 308, which takes place at Etihad Arena on Yas Island with a main card that airs on ESPN+ pay-per-view following prelims on ESPN+, goes down Saturday.
Before fight night arrives, though, the main card athletes, including headliners Ilia Topuria and Max Holloway, are scheduled to speak to reporters Wednesday at media day, and MMA Junkie will have a live stream beginning at 4 a.m. ET/1 a.m. PT.
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If you happen to miss any of the individual sessions on the live stream, check below for the archived videos of each media day.
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 308.
Be sure to visit the MMA Junkie Instagram page and YouTube channel to discuss this and more content with fans of mixed martial arts.
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