Assistant coach John Terry has won the coaching duel with his long-time team-mate Frank Lampard and has promoted to the Premier League with Aston Villa. Villa beat Lampard coached Derby County 2-1 (1-0) in the play-off final on Monday and returned to England’s top football league after three years of second place.
Dutchman Anwar El Ghazi (44th) and Scot John McGinn (59th) scored for the Birmingham team in the Wembley Stadium promotion final. Jack Marriott’s follow-up goal (82nd) came too late for Lampard and Co. The success is also enormously valuable for Villa from a financial point of view: the club now has around 190 million euros in TV money to spend.
Previously, Norwich City with German coach Daniel Farke and Sheffield United had already secured their promotion. Villa, on the other hand, had to go through the play-offs in fifth place of the regular season – the teams in places three to six make up the last promoted team among themselves.
On Monday it had looked like a long time after a sovereign victory for Villa. After McGinn’s 2-0 defeat, in which Derby keeper Kelle Roos did not cut a good figure, the resistance seemed to be broken. But Lampard’s team didn’t admit defeat. After the Anschluss, Derby pushed for the equalizer, which, despite seven minutes of injury time, no longer succeeded.
