Aston Villa 0 Man United 2

Ruud Van Nistelrooy

As­ton Vil­la 0 Man­chester Uni­ted 2, Vil­la Park, Eng­lish Pre­mier Lea­gue, May 15, 2004. FA Cup fi­nal­ist Man­chester Uni­ted picked up a 2-0 tri­umph ag­ainst As­ton Vil­la at Vil­la Park as Sir Al­ex Ferguson´s men pun­ished The Vil­lains wi­th two quick goals from Cris­ti­ano Ron­aldo and Ruud van Nistel­rooy in the fourth and tenth min­utes of the con­test respectively. 

Man­chester Uni­ted came in­to the away en­counter wi­th As­ton Vil­la on the back of a hard fou­ght 1-1 draw ag­ainst Chel­sea at Old Traf­ford where Ruud van Nistel­rooy had sco­red for the ho­me si­de and Jes­per Gronk­jaer for the West Lon­doners. At Vil­la Park, Uni­ted fou­nd them­selves a goal up in the fourth min­ute of the tie when Cris­ti­ano Ron­aldo un­leashed a well pla­ced shot which flew pa­st Vil­la net­mind­er Tho­mas Sor­ensen and in­to the near bot­tom cor­ner of the net, and a mere six min­utes la­ter Van Nistel­rooy made it 2-0 to the ramp­ant vis­it­ors wi­th a fine clo­se ran­ge fin­ish. The Claret and Blue were a bit more ag­gress­ive in the sec­ond ha­lf and Colom­bi­an in­ter­na­tion­al Ju­an Pablo An­gel came clo­se to scor­ing for the Mid­landers shortly af­ter the re­start, on­ly to see his ef­fort go wide. As the ac­tion pro­ceeded, Man­chester Uni­ted were re­duced to ten play­ers wi­th fif­teen min­utes re­maining of the clash when hard play­ing mid­fielder Dar­ren Fletch­er was sent off by mat­ch of­fi­cial Rob Styles for a sec­ond yel­low card, whi­le Ron­aldo was han­ded his march­ing or­ders for a sec­ond book­able of­fence some ten min­utes la­ter. But not even wi­th a two-man ad­vant­age did the Black Coun­try out­fit threaten the Old Traf­ford de­fence, and no more goals were pro­duced in the ga­me. Af­ter de­feat­ing As­ton Vil­la 2-0 at Vil­la Park in their fi­nal fix­ture of the 2003-04 Pre­mier Lea­gue cam­paign, The Red Dev­ils fin­ished the sea­son in third place wi­th 75 points col­lec­ted from 38 mat­ches played, as much as fif­teen points adrift of Pre­miership Cham­pi­ons Ar­senal, and four points be­hind run­ners-up Chel­sea. As­ton Vil­la Te­am: Tho­mas Sor­ensen, Jl­loyd Samuel, Olof Mell­berg, Gar­eth Bar­ry, Ulises de la Cruz, Liam Ridgewell, Lee Hendrie, Tho­mas Hitzlsper­ger, Gav­in Mc­Cann, Ju­an Pablo An­gel, Pe­ter Crouch. Sub­stitutes: Di­on Dub­lin, Pe­ter Whit­ting­ham, Mar­cus All­back, Ma­rk Delaney, Stefan Postma. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Tim How­ard, Ga­ry Ne­ville, Wes Bro­wn, John O’Shea, Mi­kael Sil­vestre, Phil Ne­ville, Dar­ren Fletch­er, Ry­an Gig­gs, Paul Scho­les, Cris­ti­ano Ron­aldo, Ruud van Nistel­rooy. Sub­stitutes: Eric Djemba-Djemba, Louis Saha, Kle­ber­son, Ole Gun­nar Sol­skjaer, Roy Carroll.

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