Brad Guzan emerged as the Aston Villa hero as Martin O'Neill's men secured their place in the Carling Cup quarter-finals with a 3-1 penalty shootout victory over Sunderland, following a 0-0 draw at the Stadium of Light.
The American, an understudy to Brad Friedel at club and international level, saved Kenwyne Jones' late penalty to take the game to extra-time and ultimately penalties.
And he maintained his excellence by saving three of Sunderland's four spot-kicks in the shoot-out with Ashley Young converting the clincher to send Villa into the last eight.
The Wearsiders will feel hard done by but they only have themselves to blame after squandering some gilt-edged chances, none more presentable than that which fell to Kieran Richardson in the closing minutes of the extra period.
Having burst clean through, the former Manchester United midfielder should have scored but hammered his shot straight into the chest of Guzan.
The Villa stopper then saved Sunderland's first two spot-kicks, from Andy Reid and Lorik Cana, and although Gabriel Agbonlahor missed for the visitors, Guzan denied Jordan Henderson to secure victory for Martin O'Neill's men.
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Said it before and I will say it again, Richardson isnt doing enough to warrant him being in the team, his finishing leaves a lot to be desired and all the free kicks and set pieces we had and all of his deliveries were poor.
Is ther no-one else to take these when Reid isnt in the team???
Good performance from Henderson and CAna apart from the pens but the keeper was briliant and he deserve his fame.
We should be kicking ourselves, the number of chances we had to put the game away. The two on one was the miss of the season, and will be interesting to see if Jones was meant to be the penalty taker. We could all see it coming, outplay Villa for 120 minutes and end up losing. Credit to the Villa fans though, they were loud all night.
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