Aston Villa<\/b> suffered a Europa League humbling as they were beaten 2-1 by Dutch minnows Go Ahead Eagles <\/b>in Deventer.<\/p>\n
Unai Emery’s side looked good to extend their winning streak to six matches in all competitions when they went ahead in the fourth minute through Evann Guessand.<\/p>\n
They missed a host of chances to kill the game, though, and came unstuck as goals from Mathis Suray and Mats Deijl either side of half-time gave Go Ahead a famous victory in one of the biggest games in their history. <\/p>\n
This was an unexpected blip in Villa\u2019s quest to finish in the top eight of the league phase as Emery plots a fourth Europa League title, and Emiliano Buendia missed a penalty late on to get his side back on level terms. <\/p>\n
It was also a disappointing night for Jadon Sancho, who failed to make a telling impact on just the second start of his loan move from Manchester United and was withdrawn in the second half. <\/p>\n
Villa, who face in-form Manchester City on Sunday, should still have enough to make it through the league phase of the competition, though their next match is against Maccabi Tel-Aviv in what has become a hugely politicised fixture.<\/p>\n
Danny Rohl discovered Rangers’ <\/b>problems run deeper than former boss Russell Martin as the Light Blues were blitzed 3-0 by Brann<\/b> in Bergen.<\/p>\n
The 36-year-old German head coach was installed as Martin\u2019s successor on Monday with the Gers sitting sixth in the William Hill Premiership and having lost their opening two league phase games in the Europa League to Genk and Sturm Graz.<\/p>\n
However, a new era at Rangers continued along familiar lines against a side third in the Norwegian top flight.<\/p>\n
Emil Kornvig scored five minutes before the break to give Freyr Alexandersson\u2019s side a deserved interval lead, Jacob Sorensen added a second after 55 minutes with Noah Holm firing in a third in the 79th minute, on a night when once again the beleaguered Light Blues performed to an embarrassingly low standard, and now sit pointless.<\/p>\n
It seems there will be no quick fix for Gers fans desperate to see the Ibrox club shake themselves out of their lethargy.<\/p>\n
With five remaining Europa League games against tough opposition, progress into the knockout phase looks unlikely and after a sobering debut, the former Sheffield Wednesday boss now has to prepare his side to face Kilmarnock at Ibrox on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, Aberdeen <\/b>crashed to a meek 6-0 Conference League defeat at the hands of AEK Athens<\/b> in the noisy OPAP Arena.<\/p>\n
Jimmy Thelin\u2019s side arrived in the Greek capital buoyed by moving off the bottom of the William Hill Premiership following back-to-back wins over Dundee and St Mirren.<\/p>\n
But their hopes of building further momentum and picking up their first Conference League points were destroyed as the ruthless hosts eased into a three-goal half-time lead.<\/p>\n
Shamrock Rovers face AEK Athens next in the competition. <\/p>\n
Watch Republic of Ireland v Belgium in the UEFA Women’s Nations League play-offs on Friday from 6.30pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow a live blog on the RT\u00c9 News App and on rte.ie\/sport. Listen to live radio commentary on an extended Game On with 2fm<\/b><\/p>\n
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Listen to the RT\u00c9 Soccer podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aston Villa suffered a Europa League humbling as they were beaten 2-1 by Dutch minnows Go Ahead Eagles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,19,17,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-141209","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115425202984691889","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}