Blackpool come back to beat Villa’s youngsters in five-goal Trophy game

Villa struck first through Fletcher Boyd in the 29th minute, which gave the evening a shape the away side would have liked: get in front, make the senior team do the forcing, and see how long the game can be kept on Villa’s terms.

Instead, Blackpool flipped it. Zac Ashworth equalised, then Jerry Yates and Jordan Brown put the Seasiders in control before Markie Meade pulled one back for Villa in stoppage time.

The scoreline tells its own story well enough. Villa’s youngsters showed they could trouble Blackpool, but once the game turned, Blackpool had the sharper stretch of it and made that spell count.

That carried real weight in the group table. Blackpool are now second in Northern Group B; Villa remain rooted to the bottom.

There is no need to force the match into a grander meaning than the competition can bear. It was a group-stage tie in a tournament that asks academy sides to cope with senior opposition, and Blackpool coped better after falling behind.

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Alex de Valletta Sports & Culture Correspondent

Alex de Valletta was good enough. A bad tackle at nineteen ended that sentence. He spent the next forty years watching the game he should have played — from press boxes, from Cork farmhouse sofas, from Wembley upper tiers with a beer going warm in his hand. He helped build Football Manager. He saw Freddie Mercury live. He has never married because women ask too many questions. Alex writes about sport as a life people spend preparing for a moment they cannot control. The score matters. What it costs to reach it matters more.

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