Villa Are Out of the Cup Then.

This weekend the UK football league has taken a bit of a break to make way for the quarter-finals of the Football Association (FA) Cup. The big game of the day saw Aston Villa from the Aston area of Birmingham take on West Bromwich Albion from the West Bromwich area of Birmingham. The fans of these two teams do not like each other at all and to make matters worse both sides have been having a terrible season and really need a win.

The first half of the match was terrible and marked out only by the referee - Anthony Taylor - complete failure to mark his authority on the players. After half-time Villa were much more fired up and scored through a pretty good Fabian Delph goal in the 51st minute. Delph celebrated by running towards the Villa fans at the Holt end of the ground and some of the fans ran onto the pitch to celebrate with him. This was all good natured but is against the rules so is a bit of a warning sign that the police and stewards need to act to keep a lid on the situation.

With West Brom being forced to chase the game for an equaliser the match then livened up a bit until a very strange moment occurred in the 79th minute. West Brom's #5 Yacob and Villa's #7 Bacuna both rushed into challenge for a loose ball. At the last minute Yacob stopped himself but Bacuna continued and slid in on him two footed smashing Yacob in the shins as he was standing still. This was clearly a dangerous challenge and should have earned Bacuna a yellow card if not a straight red card. Having already had a bit of backchat from Yacob earlier in the game the referee Taylor saw this very differently and showed Yacob his second yellow card meaning he got a red card and was sent off.

Having lost a man in dubious circumstances West Brom weren't really able to compete from then on and Sinclair put Villa 2-0 up on 85 minutes. Again he ran towards the Holt end and again a small number of Villa fans ran onto the pitch to celebrate. By this point it had become very clear that the police and stewards were completely loosing control of both the Holt end and the Doug Ellis stand. However the police and stewards continued to concentrate all their resources on the fans in North Stand and the opposite end of the stadium.

If Villa's Chief Steward hadn't realised his mistake by this point then the referee Taylor certainly had and gave Villa's Grealish his second yellow card and sent him off in the 92nd (90+5) minute for the offence of what appeared to be falling over. Despite the referee's attempt to overturn Villa's unfair advantage with just 3 minutes left and 2 goals down the game was already over for West Brom.

In roughly the 93rd minute Villa fans invaded the pitch en masse from the Holt end and parts of the Doug Ellis stand forcing the game to be stopped for around 2 minutes. After the delay the match re-started for all of a minute before there was another pitch invasion prompting the referee to end the game.

As the final whistle blew even more Villa fans invaded the pitch and were joined by the West Brom fans. By the sounds of things the police are still trying to control the situation as a I write.

This is a clear example of Aston Villa completely failing to control their fans by not taking appropriate action despite there being very clear warning signs. As such the FA will have to punish them very harshly. Considering the way Taylor's shambolic refereeing robbed West Brom of a sporting chance in the game expelling Villa from the tournament may well be the suitable punishment.

Oh and just to make things interesting Aston Villa and West Brom are playing each other again in the league on Monday.

20:40 on 7/3/15 (UK date).