Aston Villa 3 - 0 Palace

Wed Dec 3 2003 - League Cup

Crystal Palace crash out of the Carling Cup with a 3-0 defeat at Aston Villa.

Match Stats

Ground: Villa Park (Attendance: 24258)

Aston Villa: Sorensen, De la Cruz, Mellberg, Dublin (Ridgewell, 80), Samuel, Stefan Moore, McCann, Hitzlsperger, Barry (Whittingham, 72), Angel, Vassell (Allback, 73)

Subs not used: Hendrie, Postma

Booking: Hitzlsperger

Goals: Symons 22 (og), McCann 70, Angel 79

Palace: Berthelin, Fleming (Riihilahti, 56), Symons, Popovic, Borrowdale, Butterfield, Derry (Watson, 78), Hughes, Black (Routledge, 45), Shipperley, Freedman

Subs not used: Granville, Myhre

Referee: M. Dean (Wirral)

Villa started the game off brightly and had a host of chances to score - both Juan Pablo Angel and Darius Vassell tested Cedric Berthelin in the Eagles goal.

Then Stefan Moore and Dion Dublin shot wide, while Gareth Barry, Vassell and Moore had further efforts to open the scoring.

But the hosts did break the deadlock after 22 minutes. Angel struck a long-range shot from the edge of the box and looked like it was going wide, until it hit the head of Kit Symons and looped into his own net past the helpless Berthelin.

Villa were rampant and went looking for a second as Thomas Hitzlsperger went close and Palace couldn't get out of their own half.

Then Tommy Black missed an easy opportunity to level the scores. He somehow missed the target from only a few yards out after Thomas Sorensen parried Dougie Freedman's header to his feet.

Michael Hughes later forced Sorensen into a good save while down the other end, Berthelin did well to save a 30-yard strike from Hitzlsperger.

But Villa doubled their lead on 70 minutes when Angel set up Gavin McCann to head past Berthelin.

And nine minutes later, Angel got the third goal when he slotted home Hitzlsperger's cross.

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