On This Day: Aston Villa smash Liverpool in strangest Carabao Cup match ever
Aston Villa have been missing that one piece of major silverware for many years now and they have been close on a couple of occasions.
After going up through the playoffs and not winning the Championship, domestic cups became their best option for success, with falling at the last hurdles becoming an annoying occurrence.
The 2020 Carabao Cup final was the last opportunity missed, losing 2-1 to Manchester City at Wembley despite a huge last-gasp push to turn it around.
What that run did hold, was one of the strangest games we have ever seen.
On This Day, 17 December, back in 2019, Aston Villa welcomed Liverpool to the west midlands for the quarter-final of that competition, and it could not have gone any better.
The Premier League giants were minuscule stepping off the bus, with the under-23s being forced into action as the first team were away at the Club World Cup in Qatar.
Liverpool handed out five full debuts and named their youngest-ever side, something which led to the game finishing 5-0 and at one glance, one of the club’s best-ever results.
Dean Smith himself was able to make 10 changes for the game, and his side still dominated, hitting four goals in the first 45 minutes alone against the hopeless young Reds.
Two deflected goals, one from a Conor Hourihane free-kick and the second an own goal from an Ahmed Elmohamady cross got the Villans on their way.
Later strikes Jonathan Kodija and Wesley completed the route and sent the club on their way to a two-legged semi-final with Leicester City – which ended in a 3-2 aggregate win after a last-gasp strike from Mahmoud Trezeguet.
In what will no doubt go down as one of the strangest games in terms of the starting line-ups, the result was nothing compared to the 7-2 demolition job in October 2020, the year after.
Jack Grealish was at the heart of both games, and there is no doubt that he will remember both as historic nights in the recent history of the club – they don’t get much stranger than that.
In other Aston Villa news, Ollie Watkins must rediscover his clinical edge under Unai Emery to become the complete striker.