A widening grin spread across Matty Cash’s face.
He strode confidently towards the away end, the first Aston Villa player to do so. Rarely has Cash wanted to be at the front of celebrations in the past, but beating Tottenham Hotspur offered slightly more personal satisfaction.
As he headed down the tunnel to carry out post-match duties, the 28-year-old hugged and joked with Emiliano Buendia. Cash tried to compose and regather, readying himself to talk in front of the cameras, yet the laughing and smiling was difficult to control.
Even as some of Villa’s squad headed out of the stadium, separately from the team coach, Cash was among the last to leave. Waiting at the door was John McGinn. “Cashy!” Villa’s captain shouted. “Still watching your pass?”
Matty Cash applauds the Aston Villa fans in London (Sebastian Frej/MB Media/Getty Images)
It had been the second time Villa came from behind to win 2-1 at Tottenham in three years. Both victories followed a similar template, with Villa proving the second-half “protagonists”, to use an Unai Emery-ism, and increasingly more coherent in possession than their counterparts.
Both victories also saw Cash at the centre.
Football can be fickle, but memories can be long-lasting and undeviating. During the previous win here, Cash’s developing reputation with Tottenham fans reached boiling point. His hefty, late challenge on Rodrigo Bentancur, who had just recovered from a nine-month anterior cruciate ligament injury, provoked spleen from the sidelines. Bentancur was ruled out for another month.
Cash was booked then and Bentancur said he held no grudge, with the tackle itself possessing no ill intent. Bentancur’s sentiments were not reflected across the broader fanbase, however.
Ire was hurled towards Cash for the rest of the match and in every meeting since. In Tottenham minds, Cash had merely added Bentancur to a growing line of tackling targets, having already had skirmishes with Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and Matt Doherty.
Whistles met Cash’s early touches on Sunday afternoon. Boos followed. They were sharp and brief but were at their loudest when the Poland international took too long to take a throw and was punished by referee Simon Hooper, who ended up giving the throw-in the opposite direction.
Cash has been mocked by some of Villa’s own supporters over the years, too. He has received regular criticism, equally owing to his unflattering remit under Emery and the nagging feeling that his ceiling is lower than Villa’s Champions League aspirations. Unfairly, he is often the first point of blame following defeats, with the finger hastily pointed in his direction.
The Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules and a bloated wage bill, especially in the left-back position, have frustrated Villa’s attempts to find a viable right-back challenger, but Emery has always stuck by him. Within current market conditions, Villa believe their money is better spent elsewhere.
In Emery’s view, no other player understands the distinct task of playing as a right-back within his system, designed to ‘invert’ inside in a back three. To keep passes safe and slow in the build-up is an unglamorous job at times, and being strong and agile enough to repeatedly defend one-v-one can be taxing.
Harsh assessments of his offensive output and his solitary league assist last season can be significantly caveated by the role Cash is asked to perform. Emery does not ask him to be one of Villa’s key attacking outlets.
Villa’s asymmetrical system means the left-back plays more expansively, with Cash asked to stay close to Ezri Konsa and lean on his pace to guard against transitions. In the games where he has a greater scope to attack, he does not have a wide player to combine with.
“We defend more with the right full-back (than the left full-back),” Emery told reporters after the game on Sunday. “Sometimes we don’t have one player getting wide on the right side to threaten opponents.”
Such factors are why Cash is close to signing a new contract, extending his stay beyond his 2027 deal. There is an internal recognition towards Cash, which is broadly reciprocated among the fans, the few skeptics notwithstanding.
Cash revelled in the full-time celebrations, alongside Buendia, who is undergoing his own redemption arc. Together, they were integral in Villa’s winning goal, with Cash’s initial pass to spark the move quite staggering.
Tottenham had negated a Villa corner, clearing and pushing upfield.
Bouncing balls can elicit jeopardy as opponents chase frantically and, for a brief moment, one player has all the game’s pressure on them.
Here, McGinn headed back to a jockeying Cash. Ordinarily, a defender would take the safe option, either blindly clearing into touch or, frankly, anywhere. Even more daringly, Konsa had pointed for his team-mate to pass sideways to Boubacar Kamara.
Cash, though, had other ideas. He crouched low, putting his head over the ball and laces through it. The technique was akin to a half volley rather than a kick for the sky.
His pass was drilled towards the corner taker, Lucas Digne, a left-back who found himself on the right wing.
Incredibly, Digne cushioned the ball down before passing to Buendia, whose own work and finish were of the finest quality.
Both full-backs had come under heavy weather throughout the game — Cash more so from the crowd and Digne the subject of heavy thwacks to his left ankle — but combined to conjure one of the best goals of the campaign.
Aside from one skewed clearance, which fell to Wilson Odobert, Cash’s performance exemplified his season, where he has been quietly excellent, even in Villa’s lowest moments. He scored the goal to break the team’s run without a goal and, for all the unknowns caused by the summer transfer window, has become one of Emery’s most trusted figures.
“He’s now being consistent for 90 minutes,” Emery said. “Sometimes when he was playing matches in a row, he was struggling physically and was getting injured. Now he’s keeping fit very well, not injured, and for 90 minutes, he is being consistent. Now I am not watching him in the 70th minute, in the 80th minute. It is fantastic how he’s getting the balance within himself.”
Cash eventually left the stadium with the same smile on display as he departed the pitch, when boos had given way to away end jubilance. It proved to be the perfect storm for Cash to defy doubters and Tottenham once more.
