On This Day: Aston Villa and John Carew ran riot in a 4-1 win against Newcastle
On this day in 2008 (9 February), Aston Villa ranaway resounding 4-1 victors against Newcastle as John Carew scored his first hattrick for the club.
The win was a day to remember for Martin O’Neill in the Villa Park dugout as he got one over on the legendary Magpies manager Kevin Keegan and ended a run of three games without a win in emphatic fashion.
In a side comprising Scott Carson, Martin Laursen, Gareth Barry and Ashley Young, it was the colossal Norwegian striker Carew who went home with the match ball after scoring a flashbang second-half hattrick in front of the claret and blue faithful.
After falling a goal behind to Michael Owen’s deflected header after just four minutes, Villa struggled to impact proceedings in a pretty underwhelming first-half performance. O’Neill clearly gave the players the hairdryer treatment at the break as they came out a side possessed in the second half in a stunning blitz of attacking football.
Defender Wilfred Bouma equalised with a low strike from 20 yards out before Carew grabbed his first of the game with a powerful header from a Young corner kick moments later.
Having netted twice in a four-minute period and taken the lead on the hour mark, Villa showed no signs of letting up.
From a scrappy corner in the 72nd minute, the ball inadvertently fell onto Carew’s head after a goal-mouth scramble, and the imposing forward nodded home the simplest of finishes.
As the match entered its dying embers, Villa’s centre-forward completed his hattrick with a trademark penalty. A smoked strike down the centre of the goal would have taken Shay Given’s hands off if he had stayed on his feet, but the Newcastle keeper was beaten as he dived away to his left-hand side.
The 4-1 win will go down as one of the greater comebacks that fans have witnessed on the Villa Park grass and one of the highlights of Carew’s stint as an Aston Villa player.
In other Aston Villa news, the club are set to revive interest in an Athletic Bilbao player in the summer after a failed January swoop.