BIRMINGHAM, England: An early goal from John McGinn helped Aston Villa to kick off their Europa League campaign with a gritty 1-0 group-stage win over Bologna on Thursday, while Olivier Giroud came off the bench to nod in a late winner in Lille\u2019s dramatic 2-1 triumph against SK Brann.<\/p>\n
Scottish midfielder McGinn\u2019s decisive goal came in the 13th minute, setting Villa off to a positive start in their European campaign at Villa Park.<\/p>\n
McGinn broke the deadlock when a cleverly worked short corner found him in space outside the box. With precision, he struck a low shot that nestled into the bottom corner, leaving Bologna goalkeeper Lukasz Skorupski rooted to the spot.<\/p>\n
Ollie Watkins had a golden opportunity to double Villa\u2019s lead in the 68th minute from the penalty spot, after being brought down by Martin Vitik. But his tame effort was easily saved by Skorupski.<\/p>\n
Just minutes later, Bologna came agonizingly close to an equalizer when Santiago Castro\u2019s powerful header crashed against the crossbar and bounced out of play.<\/p>\n
McGinn admitted the win was vital, with Villa still without a Premier League victory this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was important to get a win at home. Not our strongest start to the season, especially here,\u201d he told TNT Sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cReally difficult to play against (Bologna) but we had chances, missed the penalty which could have made it a more difficult night. At this stage, we\u2019ll take anything that\u2019s coming.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BIRMINGHAM, England: An early goal from John McGinn helped Aston Villa to kick off their Europa League campaign with a gritty 1-0 group-stage win over Bologna on Thursday, while Olivier Giroud came off the bench to nod in a late winner in Lille\u2019s dramatic 2-1 triumph against SK Brann. Scottish midfielder McGinn\u2019s decisive goal came …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":87350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87351,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87333\/revisions\/87351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}