Watkins twice, Rogers and McGinn finish Liverpool 4-2 and seal Villa's Champions League return
Aston Villa beat Liverpool 4-2 at Villa Park on Friday night, sealing a Champions League place with one round of the Premier League season still to play and pushing Arne Slot's side down to fifth in the process.
Morgan Rogers opened the scoring three minutes before the break, finishing from the edge of the box after Lucas Digne's corner found a way back to him. Virgil van Dijk levelled it seven minutes after the restart, climbing on Dominik Szoboszlai's free-kick at the back post and steering a header into the far corner. Ollie Watkins answered with two finishes in the space of sixteen minutes, taking advantage of a Szoboszlai slip for the first and tapping in a Mamardashvili rebound for the second, to put Villa 3-1 up. John McGinn curled a long-range fourth into the top corner past Mamardashvili at the death, and van Dijk's second header in stoppage time only changed the scoreline, not the night.
Watkins and Rogers carve open a misfiring Liverpool
Watkins finished the night with two goals and an assist, a closing-stretch return that has lifted his all-competitions tally to 19 goals and five assists for the season and kept him as the most productive Englishman across all competitions at any Premier League club this term. Rogers, who also went the full ninety, posted a goal, an assist and four key passes. Between them they did the damage that pulled Liverpool's shape apart, and the back four did the rest by giving them the room to do it.
Slot's defence has now shipped 52 league goals, the most Liverpool have conceded in a 38-match Premier League season. Jamie Carragher used the post-match window on Sky to argue that this Liverpool side has too many players who do not excel in any single area, and the second-half collapse at Villa Park made the point hard to dispute. The visitors went from holding a draw on the road to bleeding three goals in 37 minutes, with Watkins's two and McGinn's strike all arriving inside a window Slot will struggle to explain on the flight home.
Villa head to Istanbul fourth, Liverpool to Brentford on a knife edge
Unai Emery had named close to a full-strength side despite the Europa League final against Freiburg coming up on Wednesday 20 May at Beşiktaş Park in Istanbul. The gamble paid off. Villa moved to fourth and are guaranteed one of England's five Champions League spots for the 2026-27 season. Emery now travels to Turkey with the chance to win Villa's first major trophy in three decades, the league business already handled.
For Liverpool the picture is messier. Fifth place still looks workable for next season's Champions League thanks to England's allocation, but the lead over sixth-placed Bournemouth is down to four points and Andoni Iraola's side have two matches still to play, at home to Manchester City and away at Nottingham Forest. Anfield hosts Brentford on the final day on Sunday 24 May, and a Liverpool win there shuts the door regardless of what Bournemouth do in their final week. A defeat, with results elsewhere going against them, would put a campaign that promised so much into a sixth-place finish and a fresh question about the direction of Slot's first full year in the dugout.
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